November 2014
Those Mothers, written by UVM Professor Tina Escaja, is adapted for the stage and directed by Georgette Garbès Putzel. The stage set uses mostly recycled material from Re-Source in Burlington, VT. The props, costumes, set, and staging of the script keep the audience from connecting the content of the play to any specific time or place; and although it is based on real events in Spain and Portugal, we navigate across 3 generations to Anywhere.

Scroll down for photos from and about the play.

Written by Tina Escaja. Translated from Spanish by Leonora Dodge.
Staged and directed by Georgette Garbès Putzel.
Cast: Gianna Kiehl, Tracey Girdich, Jeff Torbert, Georgette Garbès Putzel, Caroline Grossman
Lights: Diego Mattos
Set and costumes design: Georgette Garbès Putzel
Set technician: Sherman Plumley.
Lights design: Diego Mattos
What they say about THOSE MOTHERS

  • << … I wanted to tell you that it was so great to see your work on Saturday night, and to be a part of it. It was top notch, all of it: acting, sets, costumes, the additions of video, voices, audience participation. So many moving parts, and everything went smoothly, perfectly. And a full house! Bravo! …>> Karen Kane @Paris by Design, http://www.parisbydesign.com (NE SEMBLE PLUS EXISTER), specializing in fantastic travel to Paris, France and Montréal, Canada.
  • <<….Aah thanks for being a great teacher. Andrew and I were talking about how fortunate to have you as a director >>. Lisa Ackel Judge and Andrew Judge, the couple in the audience for Those Mothers.
  • Margaret Harrington Tamulonis, host and producer CCTV Channel 17 :<< I was astonished by the play Those Mothers at the North End Studios [sic,The Off Center for the Dramatic Arts]. Unfortunately for the reader it has finished its first run in Burlington on November 23, so since I was fortunate enough to see it, I’ll tell you about it. The theme of Those Mothers is the mother-daughter relationship set against a background of world war, poverty, totalitarianism, materialism, educational deprivation, misogyny and the real human condition, which is tragic. From moment to moment this play lived and breathed, captured us in its world, educated us, and when it ended we knew we had experienced something unique and amazing. It’s a big subject set on a small stage and the staging and acting were so engaging I felt I didn’t want to be anywhere else for the one hour running time of the play than in that little theatre named The Mosaic Mond [sic, Theatre Mosaic Mond]. The author Tina Escaja is an award-winning digital artist, novelist and poet. Those Mothers (written in Spanish as Madres and expertly translated by Leonora Dodge) draws upon Ms. Escaja’s upbringing in Franco’s Spain where for four decades women were regarded as breeders for the state with no civil rights of person, property or soul. The writing of this play is masterful, moving, deep, complicated, crystal clear and enchanting. Also the play is not limited to place or to generation. It reaches into the past and brings the present close and real. It is emotionally powerful and intellectually enlightening. Georgette Garbès Putzel, director creator of the play, also designed the set and costumes, and played one of the three leading roles, as mother. Her acting style is natural, believable, so the audience doesn’t take long to recognize her as a particular mother, a familiar mother, but never a stereotype. Ms. Garbès Putzel’s concept for the play appeals directly to all the senses of her audience and she succeeds in clarifying the script for us. Her stage pictures are sharp, multilayered, and quixotic. Many scenes comprise just the mother and daughter circling each other exchanging parts as simply as easy breathing. I perceived that each scene was like a little ply in itself, yet it all connected ion a circular way, or may be like a changing mosaic. I need to mention here that this is a multi-media play with a screen on front stage left. On this screen, a chorus of three comments throughout like a sub-conscious, subliminal text. Also, scenes are projected upstage center to lead the audience into a universal world of images that further explicate the play. Stephen Pite did the video and stills for the monitor and projector and along with Diego Mattos’s lighting, the world of Those Mothers lives and breathes as wonderful theatre. Tracey Girdich plays the other mother, who is also a daughter. She is an actor such as Bertold Brecht dreamed – someone in the moment and real. I was moved by her performance and convinced by her changing roles. That’s theatre magic, to take the audience in like that and open up our hearts and minds. Gianna Kiehl is the third leading character playing a daughter and baby ghost. Here we have a gifted, natural actor. In a flash she projects how she falls in love in a millisecond, how she yearns to be comfortable in her developing body, how stung she is from the hand of her father, how much she wants to get out of where she is and to understand the world and how she fits into it and most of all how she communicates with her mother. Al the actors were very good and as an ensemble made this play a success for the audience to experience. What Mosaic Mond has given us is a grand collaboration of talent spanning decades in ages and experience. The reasons Burlington, Vermont needs this non-commercial, experimental theater is 1) because Mosaic Mond opens a door for the audience into a whole world of ideas, images, questions and answers 2) there is nothing comparable in Burlington because this kind of theatre is not university theatre or conventional theatre 3) Mosaic Mond carries on the global pursuit of the theater artist to lift audiences to new awareness >>.

PS: Link to TMM face book: More photos (by Jeff Tolbert) on Theatre Mosaic Mond Facebook page.