Mother Tongue

What is it like to raise a child in multilingual environment? 

I don't know and I am very curious...almost anxious to find out - because that's who I am - a parent who is raising a child speaking Czech language in Los Angeles. Narayan hears English everywhere he goes as well as from his father. Thus the Czech language, the "Mother tongue" is constantly challenged, and I sometimes catch myself using an English word in the middle of a Czech sentence.

What better suited for getting a sense of an answer to my initial question than to create a community arts project. I want to ask this very question to all parents that are raising or have raised their Czech children here in Los Angeles. And, there are many other questions that I want to ponder: How do they mix Czech and English?, How do they learn to choose language according to different social situations? How does one language inform the other? How do we as parents negotiate language use with our partners/grandparents/neighbours? How about the fathers - what about the father tongue? The answers, I believe, will be best wrapped in stories and in recordings of the language that children speak. I am interested in the juicy and messy human side of it all - What's your story? What is/was it like for you, child / mother / father / grandparent? Let's hear the stories about it.

Stories come in many forms. The first, most obvious is a narrative, and that's where I want to start as well - I am excited about conducting story circles with Czech speaking community. I asked the Czech Consulate General to allow me to use their mailing list to address the Czechs. I am inviting all Czechs to share their stories of what it was like for them when they grew up as children or what is/was it like for them as parents raising their children here.

I am hoping to create communal story telling gatherings that will create an atmosphere of sharing and listening and that will bring new insight into either parenting or growing up in linguistically diverse society. Together with the participants, I would like to shape the stories and expand their form into images and other visual art forms, recordings and live voice, and then present them to the Czech community as a performance. Perhaps, if we manage to stay multilingual, the presentation may be for all - the Czechs, the English speaking, and all the other languages that we encounter during this project's process.


If you are interested in participating in my theatre arts project, please read further and email me: pavla.uppal@gmail.com. I will be happy to discuss details and set up dates for the story circles.

What is a story circle:

A Story Circle is a group of people sitting in a circle, telling personal stories, led by a Story Circle facilitator.  Each Story Circle is different according to its purpose.

What is and is not a story?

• A story is a narrative of events drawn from the teller’s personal experience.
• A story can be fashioned from a memory, a dream, a reflection, a moment in time, and more.
• A story typically has a beginning, middle, and end, as well as characters and atmosphere.
• A story is not a lecture, an argument, a debate, or an intellectualization, although these elements may be part of a story.

Dudley Cocke for forthcoming book Engaging Performance: Theatre as Call and Response:  by Jan Cohen-Cruz (Routledge)