Women in the Dark

The novel Women at Night is about a daughter who visits a village in Podjuna Valley to inform her mother that she needs to move out of their family home. This inciting incident allows us to enter the kaleidoscope of the two women’s memories. The first part focuses on Mira, the daughter who moved to Vienna as a student and stayed there, and the second, on her mother Ani. The complex dynamics of the distancing and approaching between mother and daughter, a result of the linguistic, national and class barriers between the two, never cease. While revisiting the past and browsing through memory, through the intimate events of two women’s destinies, the Austrian-Carinthian author addresses the patriarchal levers that shape society, from Christian ideology and tavern environments to war as the extreme form of violence or patriarchy.

Maja Haderlap holds a Ph.D. in theatre studies, and is a dramaturg, lecturer and author. Her first novel, Angel of Oblivion (Engel des Vergessens, 2011) won several important international awards and was staged at the SNT Drama Ljubljana. The dramatisation of her second novel (Nightfrauen, 2023) will try to capture the characters of the two women in a completely new light, thus allowing the material to live actively. Like the novel, the adaptation will have two parts. The first will focus on Mira, forever divided between the Slovenian and German languages and living in two places, between two identities, and two men. The second will look at Ani, a woman who grew strong roots despite difficulties and who, fearing transience, wishes to leave something unique to her descendants – memory.

Using memory landscapes and Mira and Ani’s inner worlds, the production will explore the questions of identity, home and belonging. The complex psychology of a place and a time will emerge in front of us. Actors will take on different roles; by layering encounters, relationships and stage memory, the identity will open in front of our eyes as an elusive and never truly completed whole.

And there is a freedom of sitting in two or more chairs, which you experience as pain but it is freedom nevertheless.

_{Maja Haderlap (Women at Night, 2025)}