Writer Jane Upton reflects on the ideas and feelings that helped shape her powerful Bruntwood Prize shortlisted play

“My largest issue was with the main character M who, I believe, was intended to be a 'raw' depiction of a new mother struggling, but instead came across as an unlikeable and harmful stereotype of an overemotional and hypocritical mother”
Youngish Perspective review of (the) Woman

When I was going through a traumatic time with my second baby, an ex-boyfriend saw me pushing a buggy through our hometown and told my brother he’d “expected more” from me.

I had been struggling with anxiety, my sense of self, the terrifying illness of my child – I was numb and wrung out exhausted – and this comment lit a fire in me. I was driven to write for the first time in months. I made copious notes on my phone and a while later my husband, sensing my desperate need for space and silence, booked me a little cottage for two nights. I drunk a lot of wine, cried and wrote two scenes that would form the basis of (the) Woman.

I wrote from my gut with a visceral drive that I think you can feel in the work. I was powered by rage and fear and a desperate bid for sanity. A few weeks later my husband took the kids away again and I wrote a messy, disjointed draft. I didn’t have any sense of whether it was good or not. I was sort of detached from myself but when I wrote I felt like I was back inside my body. I entered that draft into the Bruntwood and it was shortlisted. One of 14 out of 2000 entries. It felt like air and breath to be heard. Motherhood is apparently not a sexy topic, but my play had been shortlisted for the biggest playwriting prize in the country. 

I didn’t win but flash forward a few years and New Perspectives was taking the play on tour. We’d worked excessively to get the script into shape, supported by the brilliant dramaturg Sarah Dickenson. It was exciting and scary to share this deep, raw and honest play. The response was incredible. I have never had so many people sharing their deepest secrets with me on first meeting, but this play seemed to speak so directly to them that they felt the need to talk. It was both brilliant and a bit scary. An 80-year-old man told me he wished he’d seen the play during his first marriage because he wouldn’t be divorced. A strong, successful woman in her 60s who I only knew in a work context came and told me all about the difficulties she’d experienced in her marriage and career after children. A 50-something lad from Nottingham said he read the play and went straight to his wife to apologise. So many people said it was brave to write these scenes. It was amazing to feel so connected.

But not everyone liked it, of course. We had a two-star review that stated the main character was unlikeable. This is something I’ve thought a lot about. People find it hard to invest in characters who are unlikeable but especially if that character is a woman, and especially if she has kids.
Obviously I considered this when I was writing, but I decided to create this character without the pressure of making her someone we had to like. It was a deliberate decision. A rebellion against how hard I try in real life to be liked, and how hard so many women try. I wanted to write the play without feeling the need to balance it with scenes about how wonderful motherhood can be. I’ve heard this referred to as the “mum tax” and I didn’t want to pay it. I was writing from rage and fear, remember, and even in rewrites, years after those initial scenes were formed, I wanted to honour that.

That review also said that the main character was a “harmful stereotype of an overemotional and hypocritical mother” – let me tell you I was and am overemotional and hypocritical and I want to be honest about it. Sometimes, rarely, I am kick-ass and sassy and even a little bit strong, but normally I am messy and ugly and angry and funny and gross and unreasonable. I am everything all at once. And I’m not ready to leap-frog those feelings to write women to aspire to. Those women make me feel like crap right now. I can’t wait to meet me in my Goddess Era but for now I need to unpick the way I was formed, the contradictory emotions within me and how I move forward as a mother and a woman.

I can’t wait to share the play at the Park and to connect with even more audiences – and I bet you some of them will even love the main character. I do. 
For balance, other review quotes:

“thrilling metatheatricality… men should see this too”
The Stage ****

“Deeply engrossing, its 100 minutes fly by and it comes to an end before you know it. It’s rare to find a piece that might genuinely change your perspective on life and relationships, but this is one.”
Reviews Hub *****

“Such writing promises long life to (the) Woman. And Upton kicks ass all the way through the epilogue. A ground-breaking play, fully deserving of its London run. Catch it there.”
View from the Gods

For more on (the) Woman by Jane Upton click here