Director Kedves Emőke shares her experience on FEMMINICITY
Director Kedves Emőke shares her experience on FEMMINICITY
As part of the European project FEMMINCITY (co-funded by the EU through CERV), Kedves Emőke from the Hungarian State Theatre “Csiky Gergely” created a new production for Kobietostan, an independent artistic association from Wrocław, Poland. “MATKOPOLIS. Spacer po braku” premiered on December 7, 2025, in Wrocław and will also be performed at festivals within the project.
The socially engaged performance raises several questions: Why do mothers feel unwanted in public spaces? Why are parents’ boundaries of privacy so easily violated? Why is Poland, despite having the lowest birth rate in Europe, not a parent-friendly country? “MATKOPOLIS” is an invitation to see the city through the eyes of mothers and fathers—full of care, exhaustion, shame, but also admiration for their children.
As an artist, what did you gain from this project?
We all talk about sharing experience and how important it is to go out into the world to discover other ways of making theatre. At the same time, I realized that humanity is the same everywhere. I saw that women are in similar situations in the countries involved in the project (Poland, Serbia, Slovenia, France, Romania)—motherhood, the choice between career and personal life, building a career alongside men in the same positions—these are the same stages women go through, and the reactions are similar.
Professionally, it is a project that also brought together non-professional actors, with a focus on community theatre. At the beginning, we struggled to define how to refer to those without formal theatre education, in order to avoid using the term “amateur actor.” I found that these “amateurs” were more open, eager to make the most of the opportunity, and had many things to say, without preconceptions or learned theatrical techniques. They felt it was an extraordinary opportunity; they took a two-week break from their jobs to perform. For the Polish women in our cast, it was like a release—they were open and creative, without inhibitions.
As a woman and an artist, what is missing for theatre to better reach a female audience? We rarely encounter projects about women, created by women.
I don't define myself as a feminist, and we discussed a lot with project partners about the definition of feminism. I have created performances with women about women, but I still prefer creating for a general audience. However, within the project, there were women who felt comfortable talking about issues specific to femininity—frustrations, unresolved situations from the past, things not fully processed when they happened. It helped that they had a space to revisit these memories through an artistic lens. I observed this in three project teams — a kind of emotional catharsis.
Beyond the performance itself, it was important that we organized discussions after the shows, which were not about the mechanics of the performance, but about the project’s broader theme—the vulnerable situation of women—and how the actors connected with the theme. Audience members also asked questions about the topic, not necessarily about the show. This is the added value of the project: the performance becomes a pretext for discussing these issues.
You worked in another country, in Polish—a language you know well—in an independent theatre, with a cast of both professional and amateur actresses, on a theme chosen by the project partner, a theme important to women in Wrocław. What challenged you?
When I returned home, for three days I couldn’t reconnect with reality. I had prepared extensively before rehearsals and the premiere, but we only had a few weeks there to build the show. I was lucky to collaborate with a very talented Polish playwright, Sandra Szwarc, who wrote a text quite different from what I had requested, but preserved the essential elements. The script was ready a week before rehearsals. I knew the project involved a compressed timeline, so I went to Poland prepared. In August 2025, during a one-week preparation period in Wrocław, I realized my Polish was not at a high level compared to others in the project, who had academic training. But I also understood that it was more important for the actresses to express themselves freely, with nuances I could still grasp. I told them from the start we would work in Polish; they were patient with me, so the language was not a problem.
The theme of the performance I directed in Wrocław was the situation of parents with small children in public spaces—how the contemporary urban landscape accommodates us when we have strollers, need to change diapers, or breastfeed. At first, I felt it wasn’t a compelling theme—having children myself, I had faced this for years and didn’t want to make a performance about it. But I realized how important it was for the women I met during research in Wrocław, and how many suggestions they had. One of the actresses, very educated and musical, has a daughter with a disability and a very rare disease. The project helped her speak about it—after eight years of caring for her child at home, this was her first opportunity to do something else and express herself artistically. Another actress doesn’t have children but is interested in the theme because she feels lonely among her friends who already have children and are busy. The women had a lot to say, and that’s how the text was born.
At the post-premiere discussion, one audience member with four children said it was a good, yet sad performance—she expected theatre about motherhood to be joyful and radiant. Our goal, however, was not to talk about the beauty of this stage, but about the problems that come with it.
After several performances and a first festival, how would you define the audience for shows about specifically female topics? I’ve noticed that people who don’t usually attend theatre also come because they identify with the theme.
Yes, in Wrocław we also wondered who the show was actually for. There were three sold-out performances, and two of them had audience members we didn’t recognize from the usual theatre crowd. On one occasion, we organized babysitting services in the next room. The door was open and children could move between rooms—they wandered around and whispered, mothers could breastfeed. It was somewhat chaotic, but still a good blend of reality and theatre. This solved the problem for women who wanted to attend but had no one to care for their children. I think it could become a long-term model, even if it makes the auditorium a bit chaotic and imperfect.
What was the biggest challenge?
Before starting the project, I asked the partners what the biggest difficulty in international projects usually is, and they said conflicts often arise from cultural differences. I didn’t encounter that. What bothered me was working with a team I didn’t know, in a short amount of time. We would have needed time to get to know each other before rehearsals to reach a higher artistic level. Collaborating with unfamiliar people—without knowing their talents or artistic expression—while under pressure to be efficient during rehearsals in a limited timeframe—that was the most challenging part for me.
