Matrescence Festival presents
Reclaim Festival: The Dirty Mother
Michelle Hall’s The Dirty Mother: A Post-Punk, Post-Natal Descent Story
The Dirty Mother is an autobiographical, post-natal descent story that follows one woman through pregnancy, childbirth and into the confounding world of motherhood. The Dirty Mother recalls and performs her story of childbirth as a hysterical, heroic feat of survival and personal power. The Dirty Mother is a woman whose confidence is undercut and numinous self broken away by maternal-phobic doctors, a baby born not breathing, an absent partner, hostile in-laws and the power devoid of ‘care’ in a state-run hospital. SHE is a storyteller as a ‘sleuth’ navigating a post-natal Underworld, embarking on the mystery of where herSELF has gone and how she will recover it.
The Dirty Mother is a high-energy celebration, a communion with the audience in a 21st-century D-I-Y Birth Rite. With guffawing graphic humour and intergalactic karaoke, The Dirty Mother is a one-woman taboo buster, a totally true telling of childbirth LIVE on stage, a story of friendship and reinvention in the nappy shite of life.
The Dirty Mother premiered at The Blue Room Theatre for Summer Nights 2020 and was nominated for the Tour Ready Award (Fringe World), Best Theatre (Melbourne Fringe) and Best Actor (Performing Arts Awards WA). In 2024, Michelle’s article about making The Dirty Mother titled, How to Tell a Tricky Story About Birth Trauma, was published in Performing Maternities (Intellect Books), a new anthology emerging from the Maternity and Wellbeing Symposium produced by the University of Brighton’s Arts and Wellbeing Centre, 2020.
“It’s got everything, agony and ecstasy, anger and comedy, the promise of life and the danger of death.” SeeSaw Magazine
“Disco, Classical, Punk – the only way to give birth and prepare yourself for the aftershocks” Draf Draffin, University of Melbourne
Michelle Hall visits Reclaim from Perth, Australia, as part of this year’s Matrescence Festival. The 1-hour performance will be followed by a short post-show discussion with Michelle and Matrescence Festival founder Lizzy Humber.
This is a Babes in Arms Performance, welcoming anyone with care responsibilities to bring along babies, infants and children up to 5 years old for free, with space to spread out inside the auditorium, and a relaxed environment to step out and make use of the play mats and toys laid out for anyone to use. Please note that all little ones still require an entrance ticket, and suitablility of the show content is up to the adult’s discretion.
This event is part of Reclaim Festival, our yearly celebration of women in the arts. Featuring brilliant new writing, not-so-new-but-also-brilliant writing, workshops, music and more, immerse yourself in locally sourced female greatness, to be enjoyed by everyone.
Barnfield Theatre
This performance contains themes of birth trauma, medical misogyny/neglect and post-natal mental health.
Book Tickets
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