Maternity is a protest performance, based on a true story, that gives a stage to voiceless mothers whose children disappeared and their fate, to this day, is still unknown. In the early years of the State of Israel, and more prominently during the 1950s, thousands of babies vanished from their families – new immigrants who were housed in refugee absorption camps. Two-thirds of these children were from families who had immigrated from Yemen.
"Maternity" seeks to bring to the fore the voices that have been silenced for so many years – the mothers of the abducted children – and to find the connection between them and us – the women and mothers of today. Three actresses (who are also mothers in real-life) present on stage the painful process of giving birth, at the end of which – there is nothing. No baby. Nobody to hold for the last time, no grave to cry next to.
Hana Vazana-Grunwald is a director, playwright, founder of the Frechot Ensemble. She graduated from the Faculty of Theatre Arts Community Theatre Track at Tel Aviv University, and from the School of Social Work at Bar-Ilan University. She holds an MFA from the Theatre Department at Tel Aviv University Creator Actress Program. Since 2012 Hanna has been heading the Education Division at Jaffa Theatre.
Her work promotes theatrical language, questions, and content that intersect with cross-gender Sephardi identity and status. Her work underpins a new theatrical genre of poetic-documentary theatre, and work in artistic techniques of unwritten work without a pre-written play that emphasize her personal, social, and historical experience of performing and deconstructing images and stereotypes of Oriental femininity in front of audiences. In 2022, she was awarded the prestigious Rosenblum Prize for the Performing Arts.
