Staging a Future with Mums in Mind: Mothers Artists Makers Ireland (MAM) and the Fight to Balance Motherhood and Theater

Sometimes staging feminist futures begins with the image of mother as soldier, for motherhood is nothing if not a long series of battles. In this case, the stage was set with dark brown posts angled to a reddened sky on the horizon. Voices began to sing "Pack Up Your Troubles"; more voices are heard, this time singing "A Long Way to Tipperary." Sounds of soldiers marching began.³¹

Women, some visibly pregnant, some wrangling nursing children, marched onstage (00:52). The missing mothers of theater filed onto the stage of the Abbey Theatre, Ireland's national theater, as the group Mothers Artists Makers, or, appropriately, MAM, and introduced their production Observe the Mothers of Theatre Marching Towards the Stage in the fall of 2016.

Mothers Artists Makers formed to bring mothers back into the fold of theater and the arts. The group specifically came together as a result of a chain of events in response to the Abbey Theatre's 2016 season, themed "Waking the Nation," which was announced in October 2015. The season's ten plays included work by just one female playwright and only three female directors. A group called Waking the Feminists protested these inequalities, and, in November 2015, a woman named Tara Derrington pointed out that many mothers were unable to attend such protests because they were scheduled when schools let out. In March 2016, MAM began. MAM, which now boasts a membership of more than 350 members nationally in Ireland and internationally, had and continues to have its Dublin "Cuppas," or meetings, in a nonjudgmental space in which artist-mothers can meet in a room that has accommodations for their children. The group advocates for practical solutions and ideas toward making theater family-friendly and inclusive. (With the group's permission, Derrington shared the script and Vimeo video links recording MAM's performance at the Abbey Theatre with the author. URLs of the Vimeo files have been withheld in citations, as one participating mother requested that the links not be shared to social media due to her children being in the videos, as a condition of granting permission to share the Vimeo links to the author for purposes of writing a paper/article.)

Togetherness became a hallmark theme in the group's 2016 performance, in which names of women were read, some powerful historical warriors, and others dead as a result of Ireland's inadequate maternity care and poor societal attitudes toward unwed pregnancy.

The play took its inspiration from Frank McGuinness's male-dominated play Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme. As newly enlisted mother-soldiers got dressed, a piece of red cloth was used to mimic blood, which suddenly took on a new meaning when it was unfurled as a woman bent over, as if blood poured from her genitals. When she laid down on her red sheet, her legs were spread in the typical recumbent "push" position common in childbirth (08:30).

Lines spoken by young male soldiers in McGuinness's play here took on new meaning, including, "Those with me were heroes because they died without complaint for what they believed in."³² In the McGuinness play, this line is spoken as the protagonist, now old, reflects on his young soldiering days. In MAM's play, it came before recitation of names of Irish women dead as a result of childbirth in the late twentieth century (01:39).

In the next scene, the banner unfurled by some participants' teenage children, a boy and a girl, read "PAIRING." The women once more lined up to read a list of names of women dead as a result of childbirth and poor maternity care in Ireland, as well as female soldiers throughout history. During the live performance, a toddler fussed in the background and was soothed by nursing (10:30).

After the teenagers exited with the "PAIRING" sign, the women swayed to the chant of "lunch, homework, activities, dinner, bedtime," a pattern to which parents can relate. During this...