Le mot progrès dans la bouche de ma mère sonnait terriblement faux

This play is about war, pain and wounded memory. The breaking down of borders in Europe, cultural diversity and regained freedom are shaping a new geographical and human landscape… they are shaping the future and hope. But if we dig just a little beneath this landscape, we discover several layers of the dead piled one upon the other and many poorly healed wounds, still bleeding… Often, borders are re-established elsewhere – in courtyards, in grudges, in tormented minds… This play aims to be a clear-sighted mirror held up to our European conscience, a warning that the light at the end of the tunnel is still a long way off…

Matéi will always surprise us, for he is never where one expects him to be. With a title like that, one imagines a scathing social portrait through a mother’s account of how the world and events are changing. We find ourselves in a village that is rebuilding itself by counting its missing and trying to give them a proper burial. In typical Visniec style, of course – that is to say, with lively, almost burlesque dialogue as we attempt to put a name to events so inhuman that many would prefer them to be kept silent.