For actress and playwright Nicolle Nattrass, the journey to motherhood was not a simple one.
“It was quite a journey,” says Nattrass, “because I always said if I don’t have a child by the time that I’m 40 then that’s okay, because I had lots of kids in my life. You know, ‘happy auntie,’ and all that stuff.”
However, fertility issues that she discovered later in life meant that only 50 percent of Nattrass’ reproductive system was ever working. It was a discovery that took an emotional toll on her.
“I was really grieving in my 39th year, like, ‘Okay, so am I not gonna be a mom?’ This is the time where I’m going to have to let that go, and all that stuff was coming up for me,” she says.
Fast-forward to her 40th birthday, and her acceptance that motherhood may not be in the cards.
“We always said, ‘If you don’t get pregnant by the time you’re 40, then that’s it,’ and that’s what I had accepted. But emotionally trying to accept that—intellectually, that was one thing, but emotionally trying to accept that was a big deal. I didn’t do anything big for my 40th birthday. We went to a retreat and had a couple’s massage and a mineral bath, and I was just kinda like, ‘I wanna be by myself for this transition.’”
Three weeks later, Nattrass got the surprise of a lifetime when she found out her now-nine-year-old son was conceived on her birthday.
“I was like, ‘Ooookay…,’” Nattrass says with a laugh.
The following few years of pregnancy, birth, infancy, and life up to the terrible twos is the foundation for her one-woman show Mamahood: Bursting into Light—a project conceived at Camosun College.
“I pitched a course called Mama Memoirs,” she says, “because when I was a new mom, I started having all these ideas, and I’m a playwright, so I’d just start writing down different ideas. And then I thought, you know, moms have so much of their experience that’s going on—so much of their identity and their life—and they’re in this transition that we should write down. So, I pitched a course to Camosun, and I taught the course… and what came out of that was actually—and I write about it in the program notes for the show—I realized that I just really needed to honour my own story.”
It’s a story that Nattrass has been able to hone over the years, a gift she doesn’t take for granted.
“I love being able to go back in and learn more about my performance and about the script, because we rarely get to do that,” says Nattrass. “As a professional actor, it’s like you have two weeks, two and a half weeks—barely—now. It used to be three weeks. Now you have two weeks to mount a show and then it’s done. And you may get a remount, you may not, but then it’s done.”
Although Nattrass admits she’s lost count of how many times she’s mounted Mamahood (her estimation is around 20), the ability to revise has allowed her to craft a story she hopes will resonate with audience members, regardless of whether they have children.
“The biggest thing I hope they take away,” says Nattrass, “is renewed understanding, renewed compassion, renewed empathy for what their moms went through, for what women go through during pregnancy, birth, and post-partum.”
Mamahood: Bursting into Light
Various times, until Saturday, October 20
$16 to $26 (student discount available), Phoenix Theatre
finearts.uvic.ca