Caroline Lucas, Green Party MEP for the South East, was among the audience at the first performance of a collection of writings from local women, Mothers Uncovered - Your Stories, last Friday, at the Tarner Children‘s Centre.

Over the past month, mothers from Brighton & Hove grouped together for a series of workshops discussing and writing around various themes linked with motherhood. The project is part of the Brighton & Hove Adult Learning Festival programme. The writings produced from the workshops has been devised into a performance piece by Maggie Gordon-Walker, Mothers Uncovered creator, project co-ordinator and mum of course! Topics explored ranged from ‘anger’ to ‘the best thing about being a mother’ and ‘body image’.

The performance was presented by Maggie & three local actresses, themselves parents. Maggie weaves together poignant observations, poetical rants with a touch of comedy. ‘You don’t want to hear, you’ll be so tired it hurts’ the cast chants comically in response to ’what would you tell a pregnant woman’ then repeat in a loop, changing their tone to a more serious note. The performers told me about identifying with the material and holding back their own emotions while performing, ‘I think you saw in the show, we were all really moved but the humour helps to break it up. It’s a joy to do.’ another of the performers tells me ‘I’m gutted the project is over. I love watching the audiences faces and seeing how it moves them’. ‘We want to tour it eventually, take this performance to other centres and open it up to more people. To have the money to do that would be brilliant.’.

The show was fused together with charming songs written and performed by Emily Hilson who runs Music for Aardvarks, a child and parent music class in Brighton & Hove. We all got swept away by her touching verse but none more so than herself, who struggled to get the lyrics out towards the end of her last song. I could sense the connection that had been forged between the mums who had been writing together. They were clearly impressed their material was put together in such a powerful way, ‘the piece was scripted in such short space of time and it was so polished’, said Rachel, one of the ‘uncovered’ mums and also a writer, ‘the whole experience of stepping back and acknowledging what motherhood is all about was really touching, discovering how much we have in common as women and just feeling like everyone else’s story was my own story.’ Caroline Lucas, who sits on Parliaments Women’s Rights and Gender Equality Committee, shared her personal interest in the show. ‘Being mum of two myself, this is part of my identity. It’s wonderful to get back in touch with some of those feelings that are around being a first time mum. It was a great opportunity to come and tune into that.‘ I also asked her what she learned about recent mums and their challenges, ‘It reminded me how important the support groups around you are. That’s true in so many walks of life and different times of your life but perhaps never more so than when you’re a first time mum, where everything is new. On one level you’re absolutely euphoric and another level you’re absolutely terrified, the sense you are doing something wrong, experiencing emotions the books don’t tell you about.’ There’s another chance to see Mothers Uncovered - Your Stories, at the Spring Forward this weekend, Saturday 20th March, 2.30pm in the children’s section of the Jubilee Library.