Why Motherhood?

We create this piece in exploration of our own lived experiences around nurturing.
We honor the different/range of relationships we and other LGBTQ folx have with our gestational/biological mothers.
This piece is for our many many nurturers/mothers, including our Trans/(gender)queer/GNC/Two-Spirit selves.

Photo from most recent Work-in-Progress showing at Counterpulse SF

Motherhood is such a complicated theme to talk about; the public imagination of what it is to be a mother seems rigid and crystallized. Motherhood is romanticized, idealized, and gendered to such a degree that if you were not born into or deviate (like all humans do) from the ideal norm, you feel or are frequently considered a failure.To deconstruct what it means to be “Mother” and offer/express our different connections to it has been a challenge. Within our process, each collaborator has brought distinct perspectives and thematic interests (based on their personal experiences).

Mother The Verb is a Queer/Trans performance dance, produced and created by Ivan Monteiro (Brasil), Javier Stell-Fresquez (Chican@ originally from El Paso, Tigua & Piro Native), and Davia Amerasu Spain (San Francisco Bay Area native). Their work runs Thu-Sat, Dec 7-16 with “Pay what you can Thursdays” as a double-bill performance with Lxs Desaparecidxs as part of CounterPulse’s Performing Diaspora 2017 residency.