A cry, ready to pierce the heavens, rang out on Saturday, July 4, 2026, at the Little Theater of Ancient Epidaurus.

Twenty-one women from Ukraine, Belarus, and Poland, ranging in age from 9 to 71, gathered on stage. A choir composed of mothers and daughters—survivors and witnesses to the devastation wrought by armed conflicts—served in this theatrical production as a vehicle for diverse life stories and political experiences.

Among them were refugees from Mariupol, Kyiv, Irpin, and Kharkiv—women who had been displaced, as well as women who opened their homes to welcome others. The testimonies of mothers and children, uprooted by the war, became the basis for a project that articulates a collective voice of protest.

Marta Górnicka, founder of CHORUS OF WOMEN in Warsaw and the POLITICAL VOICE INSTITUTE in Berlin, gave voice to a multifaceted collective that has become a repository of women’s polyphonic traditions through the ages.

The performance began with a shchedrivka, a traditional Ukrainian song of blessing associated with the rebirth and renewal of life.

Subsequently, Ukrainian folk songs, children’s rhymes, lullabies, incantations, and political slogans woven together to form a dense soundscape, where individual voices remained vivid within the whole.

With the atrocities of war and the female body traumatized and abused since the dawn of human history, Mothers – A Song for Wartime is a courageous cry for peace, standing against the atrocities of modern armed conflicts with a powerful impact, firsthand accounts, and a reflection on the moments of peaceful everyday life that precede every horrid war.