“What does it mean to be a good person? Do you think we value the same things in life? Was I well behaved as a child? What about me do you not understand? Do you need to be tough to survive?”
Performative reality theatre that erases the line between public and personal, LIKE MOTHER, LIKE DAUGHTER was initially conceived as an inter-generational, multi-faith exploration of the relationship between mothers and daughters. At each performance, four different pairs of real life mothers and daughters (no professional actors) engage in a ‘game’ of answering questions randomly chosen by the host from a big stack of cards on stage. Unscripted and unfiltered, the women’s responses are honest and unexpected and each performance is as fascinating as fictional drama.
A collaboration of Toronto’s inventive Why Not Theatre and UK-based international touring theatre company Complicite Creative Learning, LIKE MOTHER, LIKE DAUGHTER received its world premiere in Montreal at OFFTA (2014), was presented at the Battersea Arts Centre in London, UK (2015), and has numerous global productions with local mothers and daughters in the works.
The Toronto premiere focuses on generational and cultural differences between mothers and daughters, from Syria, Turkey, Bangladesh, Canada, South Africa, Poland, and Venezuela, who come together to create and perform a show using their own lives and stories.
Following each live performance, the whole audience is invited to continue the conversation with the mothers, daughters and creative team over a meal prepared in a partnership with Newcomer Kitchen, a project with newly-arrived Syrian refugee women who prepare meals in a communal kitchen for sale online or by delivery.
An unintended spin-off from Why Not Theatre’s box office and critical hit, A Brimful of Asha which stars Ravi Jain and his mother Asha Jain (and is currently being remounted by Soulpepper), LIKE MOTHER, LIKE DAUGHTER, and Why Not Theatre, challenges and undermines traditional conventions and existing models of theatre creation to tell unique stories that are universal.