The realities of performing at the Edinburgh festival with a baby

I haven’t performed at the Fringe since 2015, when Donald Trump was just a funny businessman, and Instagram was a little site for posting undersaturated pictures of coffee cups.

I was in my early 20s and in a big cast with other bright-eyed, bushy-tailed theatre makers; sharing the lines, sharing the producing, sharing the flyering, and sharing a bed (though mostly up all night drinking dodgy drinks and kissing dodgy boys).

It’s been a decade, and both Trump and Instagram have gotten a lot more sway than they had in 2015. I’ve become older, not a lot wiser, but definitely tired-er, and in the intervening years, I’ve managed to pick up some children. Really little ones, one of them can’t even walk yet, so most of the time I have baggy eyes and a bushy (greasy) mum-bun.

So it’s the perfect year to make a comeback!

Madonna on the Rocks is about trying to be an okay artist and trying to be an okay mum, and trying not to have a complete meltdown. It’s about how to be a feminist when childcare is extortionate and why anyone would want to make art, or a baby, when the world is on fire.

I had my first baby in 2022, and my brain was blown apart. Being a theatre maker was all I’d ever known, and if I wasn’t making theatre, I didn’t know who I was anymore. The lack of visibility of mums in the industry made me feel I had no way back in, and my loss of self, and my powerlessness to fight the system sank me into post-natal depression.

So even though it would probably be more sensible to stay at home, spend yet another year watching everyone else going up, reading the reviews, and biding my time till the kids are grown… I think that would actually speed up the meltdown. So I’m doing it now.

No one to share my lines with, no one to share the producing with, but I will be sharing a bed with two dodgy (baby) boys. They’ll most likely keep me up all night, and I doubt they’ll be much help with the flyering, but it’ll be much nicer to kiss them goodnight than whoever I was kissing a decade ago.

We’ve made a beautiful, dark, and very funny show. If we can laugh, dance, cry, scream, and then laugh a bit more, and break the taboos and support each other, then the world will be better for it.

Madonna on the Rocks plays at Assembly (Roxy Boxy) from 31 July to 25 August (not 11th, 18th) at 11:55