The Soon Life at Southwark Playhouse UK This October

The Soon Life, a bold new production at Southwark Playhouse Borough, this October, 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.

Centering 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 (co-founder 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 (Dominoes, Stratford Circus 2018; A Secret Life, Theatre503 2016). 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.

Writer and performer Phoebe 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.

Offering fresh perspectives to continue this important conversation, Michelle Tolfrey (Clinical Psychologist and Associate Trainer, Make Birth Better) who specialises in working with people who have experienced reproductive trauma, integrating her own personal experiences of loss into her work. Elif Ege (policy & campaigns manager, Birthrights) is a feminist and activist whose work has seen the successful implementation of policy that achieves safe maternity care, free from discrimination, coercion, and violence. Director of The Soon Life, Sarah Meadows (Ride, San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre 2024; Blithe Spirit, Harold Pinter Theatre 2021; The Good Enough Mums Club, Birmingham Hippodrome 2023), will join the discussion as an award-nominated musical and theatre director and advocate for parents working in the arts.

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.

Main Image: Courtesy of The Soon Life

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