Being a mother has never been an easy task, but what about a mother who tries to be good, to protect her children amidst a country torn apart by conflict? In Told By My Mother, making its Singapore premiere this May as part of the 2025 Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA), Lebanese artist Ali Chahrour draws from his own family history—and from the fractures of a torn Lebanon—to weave a tapestry of stories both intimate and immense.

Combining theatre, movement and urban-infused Arab music, Told by My Mother follows Leila, a mother striving to shield her child, Abbas, from the fate of martyrdom. Alongside her stands Fatmeh, a mother who has never stopped searching for her missing son, Hassan. Performed by Ali Chahrour himself, alongside actress Hala Omran and musicians Ali Hout and Abed Kobeissy (of Two or The Dragon), the performance promises to breathes life into these ordinary heroines and the fierce tenderness of maternal love.

“I come from a family surrounded by strong women. My mother raised me when my father died 20 years ago. There were a lot of powerful stories, especially from the mothers in my family,” says Ali. “Love is not always la vie en rose; it works in parallel with death. So in As Told by My Mother, I wanted to explore the infinite and unconditional love of mothers — especially Lebanese mothers — who live through survival, resistance, and protection, and whose heroic stories are often unheard.”

“Today is Mother’s Day in Lebanon, and I’m having a Mother’s Day lunch with my family. Growing up, I’ve always had a very strong relation with my mother and all the mothers around me — not just maternal love, but also respect for how they’ve gone through so much heartbreak,” he adds. “Mothers in Lebanon witness the destruction of the world — explosions, economic crises, no electricity, no hospitals — and they still go on, even when they should be resting in comfort. I have so much love and respect for her, but it’s still heartbreaking to see my mother aging in insecurity and danger. I wish I could protect her as she has protected me, but I feel weak compared to everything else she has to face.”

As Told by My Mother belongs to the second part of a trilogy about love that Ali is working on, and with this piece in particular, helps him to explore the overwhelmingly large idea of love. “I started working on trilogies because there are themes I want to tackle over multiple performances across four or five years — to study, research, and collaborate with different people on one big theme, like death, love, and now fear,” he says. “The trilogy started from a need to talk about love as a statement onstage, and I needed that time to fully research, interview, and to work with amateurs and people who carry lived stories onstage, advancing these real stories into the theatre.”

“In As Told by My Mother, two stories unfold: one about a mother whose son disappeared in Syria, and another about a mother who protected her son from becoming a fighter, and would have likely died on the field” he continues. “Part of the inspiration comes from the real story of how my aunt’s son went missing after crossing into Syria to renew his papers. She did everything to find him but passed away from cancer without ever knowing what happened. It’s really about extreme forms of love, death and the people involved, facing political and religious ideals, and making a statement, an act of resistance against the violence, through the voices of mothers.”

Trained as a choreographer and dancer, Ali incorporates not only movement and song into his work, but specifically, Lebanese culture as well. “I believe in the power of music onstage, and also in the power of dancing and singing, which further empowers the way we retell these stories through live encounters,” he says. “There’s a beautiful clash between professional dancers and musicians and the people telling their stories in natural ways, moving and singing honestly, and there is so much to learn from both sides, in being real, in being honest about the way one tells a story. And by including such singing and performance, something that’s much rarer in contemporary work, I hope that the music and lyrics help connect us to personal memory and help us move forward.”

“I don’t see what I’m presenting as ‘Lebanese culture’ specifically, it just comes to me naturally, connected to my reality,” he adds. “Perhaps subconsciously, when I watch contemporary dance, I appreciate it aesthetically, but I don’t want to impose techniques on a local context where they don’t belong. And now more than ever, I feel the need to disconnect from Western influence; more than seeing it as ‘identity’, there is simply a need to move this way.”

Working in Lebanon as an artist is not an easy decision, not only because of the national conflicts, but also the instability of the profession. Yet, Ali presses on. “Every performance is a new battle, and nothing is taken for granted. Every achievement we make is a small victory for me and my team,” he explains. “To me, theatre and performance is my only form of communication that makes me feel human sometimes — breathing, sweating, and sharing ideas directly with an audience.”

“To even premiere this show back home was a struggle, with production fees so high and bank accounts blocked, and venues unavailable. When we opened this show in Lebanon, it was like a celebration, with so many tears in the theatre, especially from my own family. And at the end of the night, there was a moment of silence in the darkness, hesitant to applaud, and some people shared that they just wanted to go home and talk to their mothers or children, and it felt like we had created something beautiful,” he says.

Today, that impulse feels even more urgent. “The world is completely silent as to what’s going on in Lebanon. Art cannot be separated from reality, and it becomes my tool to resist what is happening,” he says. “As an artist, everything we do must be political, right down to how we tell stories. Wars seek to eliminate, but our bodies, our music, our stories will not be eliminated. Even if we are killed, our stories will remain.”

He recalls the words of a Palestinian poet killed in Gaza: If I die, you must live to tell my story. “And that’s what I’m doing now,” Ali says simply. “Telling these stories of contemporary heroes who left the world without justice being done to them, to keep these stories alive as an act of resistance in the face of aggression. It’s heartbreaking to see my mother age in this time of insecurity and lack of safety, but all the more, we must learn to love each other, to care for each other, to protect each other when everything else is out of control.”

Told By My Mother runs from 16th to 17th May 2025 at Victoria Theatre. Tickets available from BookMyShow

The 2025 Singapore International Festival of Arts runs from 16th May to 1st June 2025. Tickets and more available here