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How to Tell a Tricky Story about Birth Trauma: Transforming My Lived Experience into a Mythical Epic

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This chapter deals with how I created a piece of theatrethat tells a tricky story about pregnancy, childbirth, post-natal recovery and reinvention. It will discuss how myautobiographical performance holds up, examines andthen rips apart outdated images of maternity andnotions of post-natal mental illness. It comprises fivedramaturgical ‘stops’ that combine writing and images. Iwill describe the process of reconstructing my livedexperience of birth trauma: how I conceived, labouredand nurtured the ideas that birthed The Dirty Mother: apost punk, post-natal descent story.

Keywords: autobiographical theatre ; birth stories in performance ; childbirth and memory ; clown comedy ; Demeter and Persephone ; ecstatic mocking and bouffon ; live storytelling ; maternal art ; maternal mental health ; maternity and identity ; motherhood and identity ; physical theatre ; post natal mental health ; punk maternity ; visual dramaturgy

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How to Tell a Tricky Story about Birth Trauma: Transforming My Lived Experience into a Mythical Epic
Intellect , 117 (2024); https://doi.org/10.1386/9781835950166_9
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References

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References

  1. Argento, Dario (1977), Suspiria, Germany: Seda Spettancoli S.P.A Rome.
     [Google Scholar]
  2. Bowie, David (1969), ‘Space Oddity’, David Bowie, vinyl, UK: Mercury Records.
     [Google Scholar]
  3. Bullman, Janine (2009), ‘Girls unconditional’, Loud and Quiet, 3:8, pp. 28–31, http//:issuu.com/loudandquiet/docs/issue8. Accessed November 2022.
     [Google Scholar]
  4. Ehrenreich, Barbara (2007), Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy, London: Granta Books.
     [Google Scholar]
  5. Estes, Clarissa Pinkola (1992), Women Who Run with the Wolves, London: Random House.
     [Google Scholar]
  6. Estes, Clarissa Pinkola (2005), The Creative Fire (audiobook), Boulder, CO: Sounds True.
     [Google Scholar]
  7. Hall, Michelle (dir.) (2020), The Dirty Mother: A Post-punk, Post-natal Descent Story, The Blue Room Theatre, 17–23 January.135
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Hillman, James (1979), The Dream and the Underworld, New York: HarperCollins
     [Google Scholar]
  9. Langley Schools Music Project (1976–77), ‘Space Oddity’, composed by D. Bowie, Innocence and Despair, digital file, British Colombia: Bar/None Records Manimal Vinyl.
  10. Lehman, Hans-Thies (2006), Post Dramatic Theatre, Oxon: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  11. Pardo, Enrique (2018), ‘Nekyia Festival 2018’, Enrique Pardo Blog, 11 April, http://enriquepanblog.wordpress.com/2018/04/11/nekyia-festival-2018. Accessed 1 November 2018.
  12. Pearson, Caroline (2015), Persephone Rising, New York: HarperCollins.
     [Google Scholar]
  13. Sharpe, R. F. and Sexon, S. (2018), ‘Mothers milk and menstrual blood in Puncture: The monstrous feminine in contemporary horror films and late medieval imagery’, Studies in the Maternal, 10:1, pp. 1–26, http://doi.org/10.169995/sim.256.
     [Google Scholar]
  14. Sulawski, Andrej (1981), Possession, Germany: Gaumont, Oliane Productions, Marianne Productions and Soma Film Productions.
  15. X Ray Spec (1977), ‘I Am a Cliché’, composed by P. Styrene, vinyl, Germany: Virgin.

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