Ripening review | Gasworks Arts Park

Ripening, written and directed by Jayde Kirchert, explores the experience of pregnancy through Lea, a woman nearing the end of hers. She focuses closely on Lea's personal journey, supported by an all-female cast, that offers different perspectives on what it means to become a mother. It’s a thoughtful look at some of the challenges and emotions that be stirred up in the lead up to giving birth. 

Kirchert delivers an engaging exploration of the path to motherhood through Lea (Veronica Thomas), a woman on the cusp of giving birth. Although Lea is in a relationship with her male partner, his complete absence from the narrative allows Kirchert to centre her story and amplify a range of viewpoints on motherhood via an all-female cast. The play also does an excellent job of creating a bond between Lea and the audience - regardless of whether they’re pregnant, female, or neither.

Dry Land review

Amy and Ester share very little in common, apart from their place in the school swim team. But dive a little deeper and these two women discover they actually have many things in common, as well as secrets of their own. In Ruby Rae Spiegel's Dry Land, we are introduced to the (private) lives of schoolgirls and the real issues they are facing.



Luce Wirthensohn (Amy) and Cassidy Dunn (Ester) have a great ability in giving layered performances for their complex characters, but they are let down by a script that throws too much at them and the characters end up being driven by the narrative rather than driving the narrative. Dry Land would have been far more effective had we focused on the relationship between Amy and Ester, and by extension their individual lives, and not introduced to a number of secondary characters that add little to the story.

What Every Girl Should Know review

Four young girls living in a Catholic reformatory in 1914 experience an awakening when they come across Margaret Sanger’s Family Limitation, one of the first guides on birth control to be published in the United States. Monica Byrne’s What Every Girl Should Know has the girls questioning and challenging the faith and beliefs they’ve held as they start to explore their desires and fantasies from their new-found enlightenment that offers them power and liberation. 

The ensemble - Ravenna Bouckaert, Rachel Kamath, Vivian Nguyen and Shirong Wu – do a great job of bringing these girls to life and while they have distinct personalities, they don’t let them become stereotypes as they create a depth and authenticity to them. Nguyen is a highlight of the production, providing some comedic relief to the otherwise bleak (yet hopeful) narrative and she displays a carefully considered depiction of Lucy’s apprehension, fear and struggles.

Mockingbird review

Giving birth and becoming a mother are supposed to be some of the most fulfilling and happiest moments of a woman's life. Except when it's not. Postnatal depression (PND) affect 1 in every 7 women who give birth and in Mockingbird, writer and performer Lisa Brickell places PND under the spotlight.

Through comedy, cabaret and mask play, Brickell weaves a tale that follows four generations of women from one family and how PND impacts each woman and the cruel and painful ways that it was treated and the stigma they had to endure. Our protagonist is Tina, a counsellor who is experiencing some anxieties about having children with her partner. Tina begins to share with us the stories of her great grandmother, grandmother and mother and how these events have come to play on her mind with regards to becoming a mother.

Eggsistentialism | Melbourne Fringe Festival interview

There comes a point in everyone's life where they need to decide if they want to have children. Joanne Ryan has reached that point and in Eggsistentialism, the Irish performer takes a comedic journey through the process of coming to her decision, while also looking at the politics of reproduction in Ireland where 66% of voters recently voted to repeal legislation that banned abortion in a majority of cases.

"I was battling with the dilemma of whether or not I wanted to have children and decided it could be worth staging for a couple of reasons. I realised as I talked to friends and peers that I was certainly not alone in this crossroad," Ryan recalls. "It seemed that lots of people around me, men and women, were equally conflicted and yet no one was talking about it - or at least not on stages - and there was a lot of stigma and taboo around some of the core issues."

"It also struck me that I was part of the first cohort of humans in the history of the species to have a choice - my mother didn't, and my grandmother certainly didn't - and that was a really interesting and important moment in our shared history to document. The show is about my decision but it's also about my mother's journey and the entire nation’s journey and about how our social and cultural context can inform big life decisions. It’s the classic political in the personal thing; the show is universal because it’s so specific."

19 Weeks - Melbourne Fringe Festival preview

Creating theatre can often end up with the maker revealing the most personal details of their life to strangers. For Emily Steel this resulted with her award-winning play 19 Weeks, in which she opens up about terminating her pregnancy after her baby was diagnosed with Down Syndrome. Staged in a swimming pool at the Adina Apartment Hotels, this site-specific work has actor Tiffany Lyndall Knight performing the lead up and aftermath of Steel's decision.

It was the loneliness of facing an experience such as this that inspired Steel to write this show, and while it is of a highly personal nature, 19 Weeks was something that she felt she had to do. "When you go through something like that, it can make you feel very alone. And then it feels like you’re not supposed to talk about it, which makes the isolation worse. I wanted to talk about it. I wanted people with similar experiences to feel less alone. As a playwright, I’m particularly interested in challenging stories and complex female characters. This is one of those stories. If I hadn’t told it, I wouldn’t have been doing my job."

The Birth of the Unicorn Mermaid - Melbourne Fringe Festival review

Unicorn Mermaids do not exist. Or do they? Presented as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival, The Birth of the Unicorn Mermaid proves that mythical creatures can be real…well, sort of. As Ophelia Sols throws the baby shower to end all baby showers, ideals of motherhood, and what makes a good mother or a bad mother begin to surface.

After being on a diet of sugar, salt and glitter Ophelia Sol (Ruby Hughes) is ready to give birth to the first ever Unicorn Mermaid. She can finally show up all her friends by having the most unique and talented child that anyone has (and will) ever set their eyes on. But first thing’s first: she needs to throw the best ever baby shower.

While firmly set in the real world, Hughes adds an element of bizarreness with the inclusion of how Ophelia becomes pregnant and the science behind her efforts. While we scoff at her out-there plan, there is conviction in Ophelia’s theory so it ends up feeling highly probably that it will work. This combining of two different realities works quite well in setting the scene and the environment.

However, the story itself seems to get stuck as it ends up focusing more on how great this baby will be rather than trying to go inside Ophelia’s frame of mind and learn more about her reasons why. She comes across as vain and spiteful and we never get more than a glimpse of her insecurities to be able to connect with her more and understand why she is doing this.

Pee Stick review | Melboune Fringe Festival | Courthouse Hotel

It can be a pretty confronting moment when a plastic stick covered in your pee is going to determine the rest of your life. In Pee Stick, we are introduced to 26 year-old Annie who may or may not be pregnant, but we will all know in roughly 50 minutes. In that time, Annie's mind runs rife with thoughts of her own childhood as well as what the future will bring, as she attempts to comprehend the possible changes in her life, all while incorporating some cheesy 80s dance moves and songs, this is 1987 after all.

Written and performed by Carly Milroy, Annie contends with issues a woman in the late 80s would have to face as a (potentially) single mother, from receiving judgements from strangers and gossipy shop assistants to the logistical nightmare of requesting maternity leave from her manager Colleen, where Annie spends her time transferring data from a floppy disk to a CD-ROM - this is the way of the future she excitedly informs us.

We also meet Annie's mother who despite her good intentions, constantly smothers Annie and thinks she knows what's best. Milroy is intelligent enough to not make the show about who the father of her baby is and most importantly, not shaming Annie as to why she was having unprotected sex. We never learn the identity of who the father is or any of the circumstances leading up to the encounter, which allows for the story to solely focus on what Annie wants to do and allows Milroy to really hone in on Annie's state of mind.

Pee Stick | Melbourne Fringe Festival interview

There are moments in our lives where we are thrown a curve ball and all our best-laid plans go out the window. This can take mere seconds or in Annie's case, 50 minutes. Presented as part of Melbourne Fringe Festival, Carly Milroy's Pee Stick is a charming comedy cabaret that follows Annie as she agonisingly awaits the outcome of her pregnancy test.

"Pee Stick is a story about time slowing down while a single woman waits in her bathroom for a pregnancy test result. The show largely takes place in her imagination, where we meet eccentric characters from her world prompting the big questions: what could having a baby mean for Annie's professional, personal and family life?" Milroy (who serves as writer and performer) says. "There's a lot of dumb fun in Pee Stick—awkward high school moments, sea-sick monsters, rhythmic traffic disputes—but ultimately it's a play about the compromises women are asked to make in the pursuit of motherhood."

"The play is set in 1987, which meant I could take the audience back to the beginnings of at-home pregnancy tests when women had to wait up to an hour for a result (conveniently also the running time of the show!). Even though this kind of agonising wait has been compressed down to a few minutes in 2017, the same emotions and reactions are experienced: dread, excitement, grief, love…it's timeless. I wanted to highlight that the assumptions, professional barriers and social stigmas Annie grapples with in 1987 unfortunately still deeply affect women today. Also it means I get to wear a bum bag."

Pee Stick review

Annie has just pee'd on a stick. And now, locked in her bathroom, has 45-53 minutes to ponder if her life is about to completely change or not. Written and performed by Carly Milroy, Pee Stick is a humorous and playful cabaret at how we deal when things in life don't go according to plan.

Despite a story of a woman waiting to discover if she is pregnant or not been told in every way shape and form, what set this show apart, was Milroy's decision to situate it in 1987. We are in a cute nostalgic world where there are no mentions of iPhones and the Internet but floppy disks and CD-ROMS! It also helps in raising the stakes on the outcome of Annie's pregnancy test, as the social stigma of a single mother in her 20s in that era was far more significant than what it is now.

e-baby review

For some people, giving birth and becoming a parent is the most beautiful experience in life. There are unfortunately women who are unable to carry a baby to term and so turn to surrogacy. In Jane Cafarella’s e-baby, inspired by interviews with infertile women and surrogates who share their stories online, we meet an accomplished lawyer who has been trying unsuccessfully for her own child for seven years. She finds a surrogate to carry her baby and we follow the relationship of these two women over the course of the pregnancy.

Both Carolyn Bock (Catherine) and Sarah Ranken (Nellie) do a solid job in portraying the often-tense relationship between these two women. Whilst it initially and naturally took a few scenes for them to appear comfortable with their characters on the preview night of e-baby, their performances feel realistic and honest. Bock finds the right balance in showing a woman who is excited about the prospect of being a mother but also depicting the desperation and shame that she would feel in fear of being seen as less of a woman. She does this both subtly and powerfully through the most miniscule of actions: a fleeting stare, a taut smile and a twitching, fidgety hand. I would have liked to see her more emotive however, in the moments where Catherine appears at her weakest and most frustrated.