The Soon Life is a bold new production at Southwark Playhouse Borough this October The theatre will host two post-show discussion panels in partnership with Birthrights, the UK’s leading authority on the human rights of women and birthing people, and Make Birth Better, supporting those impacted by birth trauma. These discussions bring industry experts together with the creative team to explore the play’s themes in depth, offering an open, honest and unapologetic conversation about childbirth and how we support birthing people and their partners.
Centring on an expecting mum called Bec in the midst of her homebirth during the COVID-19 pandemic, her carefully laid-out birth plan takes a turn when her ex and father of her child, Alex, shows up, forcing Bec to navigate the intensifying stages of labour and the emotional landmines of her broken relationship.
Inspired by the writer and creative team’s own real-life birth experiences as well as reported stories of scandals within the UK maternity services, The Soon Life presents a fictionalised space where a mother in labour is empowered, making autonomous choices about her body and birth story, offering a cathartic artistic response to a highly relatable experience.
Panellists include Laura-Rose Thorogood (CEO of Make Birth Better), is a trailblazing activist, educator, and leading voice in LGBTQ+ maternity and fertility equity, having founded the organisations LGBT Mummies and Proud Foundations, and Miranda Atty (communications manager at Birthrights), a former broadcast journalist and human rights activist. Joining them will be The Soon Life’s own writer/performer Phoebe McIntosh.
With previous accolades including being a selected writer on the Soho Theatre Writers’ Lab, Tamasha Playwrights and Talawa Firsts, The Soon Life stands out as her most personal work to date, inspired by both the difficult birth of her first daughter and stories from other mothers that resonated with her.
McIntosh comments, Birth is a subject which theatre often shies away from, placing it off stage, or playing it for laughs. The birth experience depicted in The Soon Life, is one story out of many. It doesn’t seek to idealise a particular birth choice over another. It is about a broken-hearted woman, living through a pandemic, giving birth in the way she chooses to and all that comes with that choice. There are curveballs, challenges, disappointments, things to fight for and against along the way, all so that she can safely deliver her child into the world with dignity.
Director Sarah Meadows comments, ‘The Soon Life presents birth in ways that, to our knowledge, have never been seen on stage before. As a parent of two children and experiencing the challenges of what birthing a child can bring, I was really drawn to this fictional world where a mother was claiming control of an often-disempowering process. The setting of covid and her personal identity and circumstance, adding more complexity. In this production I want to explore the opposing extremes of what childbirth is and represents as this extraordinary, ordinary process and want to pull at time and reality, which get turned inside out during labour.’
The Little, Southwark Playhouse Borough, 77-85 Newington Causeway, London SE1 6BD from 1st – 18th October.
Booking and full details: https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/the-soon-life/
