Shaw presents Mother, Daughter in outdoor Spiegeltent

A new theatre space at Shaw Festival, a round wooden tent filled with mirrors, is the perfect venue to reflect the many facets of mother-daughter relationships.

Mother, Daughter is about the moment when a child realizes that parents are flawed human beings. Through typically mundane, normal and habitual conversations about a boyfriend, a bath and a cup of tea, Patty Jamieson as mother, and Jade Repeta as daughter, circle around each other both physically and verbally. As many of these conversations can be, feelings get hurt and words and intentions are misinterpreted, until finally an effort is made to make it right, albeit one wonders, is it too late?

The play is held in Shaw’s Spiegeltent, a structure built in Belgium in 1921. It is a circular structure, with a saloon-style feeling, festooned with multiple mirrors (‘spiegel’ is Flemish for mirror) and rich, dark drapery. Most of the action takes place on centre stage — think theatre-in-the-round — but a final and pivotal scene occurs on a small stage, right next to where a different real-life mother and daughter from the community are seated for every performance.

The 45-minute play, written and directed by Selma Dimitrijevic, also casts men in the role of Mother and Daughter. The audience does not know which cast members will appear, however, the dialogue is ubiquitous in homes around the globe.

Dimitrijevic wrote the play after reading East of Eden by John Steinbeck, in which a child comes to the harsh realization that  “adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just.”  Daughter needs to find it in herself to forgive Mother these transgressions.

Mother, Daughter plays until Oct. 7. Tickets are available at shawfest.com.