Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting 2022 Shortlist: Jane Upton

M is trying to write a play…about motherhood. About what it’s like to carry another human inside of you. About giving birth. About feeling lost. About feeling more alive than ever. It’s honest. It’s exactly what she wants to write, right now, in this moment. But in the 21Century it’s not sexy to ‘just’ be a mum – everyone wants MORE, more sass, more vibrancy, more sex (less f**king) more substance! Motherhood, well it’s just not radical is it?

(the) Woman follows M, who is trying to write a play about motherhood, but in the 21st Century it is not sexy to be ‘just’ a mum.

Writer Jane Upton’s plays include The Price of Home (Paines Plough & Derby Theatre: Come to Where I Am, S6), Finding Nana (Pleasance Edinburgh Festival, dir Katie Posner, New Perspectives) and All the Little Lights (Fifth Word, UK tour, Arcola Theatre), Watching the Living – an adaptation of two short stories by Daphne Du Maurier (New Perspectives, UK tour), Swimming (Menagerie Theatre, Hotbed Festival, Soho Theatre and Edinburgh Festival), and Bones (Fifth Word, Edinburgh Festival and UK tour).

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