{"id":16498,"date":"2018-10-10T09:00:40","date_gmt":"2018-10-10T16:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=16498"},"modified":"2018-10-05T14:35:19","modified_gmt":"2018-10-05T21:35:19","slug":"new-play-about-motherhood-has-camosun-college-roots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2018\/10\/10\/new-play-about-motherhood-has-camosun-college-roots\/","title":{"rendered":"New play about motherhood has Camosun College roots"},"content":{"rendered":"

For actress and playwright Nicolle Nattrass, the journey to motherhood was not a simple one.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was quite a journey,\u201d says Nattrass, \u201cbecause I always said if I don\u2019t have a child by the time that I\u2019m 40 then that\u2019s okay, because I had lots of kids in my life. You know, \u2018happy auntie,\u2019 and all that stuff.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, fertility issues that she discovered later in life meant that only 50 percent of Nattrass\u2019 reproductive system was ever working. It was a discovery that took an emotional toll on her.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was really grieving in my 39th year, like, \u2018Okay, so am I not gonna be a mom?\u2019 This is the time where I\u2019m going to have to let that go, and all that stuff was coming up for me,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Nicolle Nattrass\u2019 new one-woman show explores motherhood (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Fast-forward to her 40th birthday, and her acceptance that motherhood may not be in the cards.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe always said, \u2018If you don\u2019t get pregnant by the time you\u2019re 40, then that\u2019s it,\u2019 and that\u2019s what I had accepted. But emotionally trying to accept that\u2014intellectually, that was one thing, but emotionally trying to accept that was a big deal. I didn\u2019t do anything big for my 40th birthday. We went to a retreat and had a couple\u2019s massage and a mineral bath, and I was just kinda like, \u2018I wanna be by myself for this transition.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was like, \u2018Ooookay…,\u2019\u201d Nattrass says with a laugh.<\/p>\n

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<\/i>\u2014a project conceived at Camosun College.<\/p>\n

\u201cI pitched a course called Mama Memoirs,\u201d she says, \u201cbecause when I was a new mom, I started having all these ideas, and I\u2019m a playwright, so I\u2019d just start writing down different ideas. And then I thought, you know, moms have so much of their experience that\u2019s going on\u2014so much of their identity and their life\u2014and they\u2019re in this transition that we should write down. So, I pitched a course to Camosun, and I taught the course\u2026 and what came out of that was actually\u2014and I write about it in the program notes for the show\u2014I realized that I just really needed to honour my own story.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a story that Nattrass has been able to hone over the years, a gift she doesn\u2019t take for granted.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love being able to go back in and learn more about my performance and about the script, because we rarely get to do that,\u201d says Nattrass. \u201cAs a professional actor, it\u2019s like you have two weeks, two and a half weeks\u2014barely\u2014now. It used to be three weeks. Now you have two weeks to mount a show and then it\u2019s done. And you may get a remount, you may not, but then it\u2019s done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Nattrass admits she\u2019s lost count of how many times she\u2019s mounted Mamahood<\/i> (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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest thing I hope they take away,\u201d says Nattrass, \u201cis renewed understanding, renewed compassion, renewed empathy for what their moms went through, for what women go through during pregnancy, birth, and post-partum.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mamahood: Bursting into Light
\n<\/i>Various times,\u00a0until Saturday, October 20
\n$16 to $26 (student discount available), Phoenix Theatre
\nfinearts.uvic.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For actress and playwright Nicolle Nattrass, the journey to motherhood was not a simple one. \u201cIt was quite a journey,\u201d says Nattrass, \u201cbecause I always said if I don\u2019t have a child by the time that I\u2019m 40 then that\u2019s okay, because I had lots of kids in my life. You know, \u2018happy auntie,\u2019 and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16499,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,220],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-october-10-2018"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16498"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16500,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16498\/revisions\/16500"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}