“truthful, engaging stories delivered with sincerity”
Motherlogues at the Etcetera Theatre, Camden, is the third instalment of Forked Theatre’s successful show. It sees five female actors perform monologues addressing issues affecting women. The main theme of motherhood is at the heart of the production and further themes branch from this. These include mother/daughter relationships, birth, surrogacy, miscarriage and the judgement and stigma that can surround these topics.
The most intriguing aspect of the production, and its creative process, is the fact the five actors spent just five days creating the monologues from their own life experiences. These, alongside experiences ‘donated’ to the company by other women, result in truthful, engaging stories delivered with sincerity that female audience members will no doubt be able to relate to.
The stories include a harrowing account of the process of a natural miscarriage, a difficult birth in a Spanish hospital, a woman who underwent a hysterectomy at the age of 22 and an insight into the pressures put on young women to settle down and have a family.
The actors present the stories under a single spotlight, in turn, while the remaining actors sit in darkness at each side of the stage. This allows the audience to hone in on the individual delivering the story and engage with the emotions and issues being presented. The production’s dialogue is largely read from scripts, which led to a few stumbles in the dialogue, but these by no means affected the overall delivery of the piece and were soon forgotten.
Motherlogues deals with topics in relation to motherhood which are not often discussed, but are nevertheless important. The production has the ability to be kept fresh, with the possibility for new instalments and stories from different women. It explores what it is to be a woman in the 21st century and will hopefully encourage discussion of delicate, but highly relevant topics affecting women today.
Reviewed by Emily K Neal
MOTHERLOGUES
is at The Etcetera Theatre until 27th August as part of Camden Fringe Festival
“the piece in its current state lacks theatricality”
Last Word Theatre’s new piece, The Invisible Condition, serves as a verbatim fragment poem, addressing the state of Mental Health Services in our current social climate through a collection of incomplete personal narratives. Incredibly relevant and informative, the piece speaks to a subject matter that demands awareness and consideration, however without a narrative through line or strong distinctive characters, the piece was left waning somewhat between documentary drama and research essay.
Verbatim theatre is a tricky beast to master; with an amorphous mass of textual information, often unrelated or contradictory, the task of weaving together a compelling theatrical narrative can be a daunting one. The Invisible Condition seems to struggle with this task, occasionally edging more towards a presentation that a piece of theatre. In this style, the overwhelming variety of characters and stories, presented largely through direct address, often leaves the audience groping for some form of concrete centrepiece to tie it all together.
Despite this lack of structural integrity, the stories that are told are pregnant with humanity and tender with the stories of those who’s voices are left unheard. Navigating between the testimony of medical professionals, patients and academics, the full compliment of those that make up Mental Health services are present and correct, and a full array of perspectives and arguments are exchanged.
Some really beautiful moments of acting came through in more intense moments of pure monologue and character, extended sections of speech which allowed the audience to invest in the story of a single character, and the occasional theatrical and metaphorical use of props was greatly appreciated, and contrasted well with the simplicity of the aesthetic. However, largely speaking, the piece in its current state lacks theatricality and focus of attention and is in desperate need of strong visual cues or movement to break up the performance of the text and bring a more contextualised understanding of the stakes of these incredibly powerful stories.
