Theatre Meets Endurance Parenting at Auckland Fringe

Theatre Meets Endurance Parenting at Auckland Fringe

Artsense Productions and Basement Theatre announce the debut play by Amy Mansfield in the Theatre’s one-to-one season for the Auckland Fringe.

This Is What You Signed Up For places the audience member of one at the centre of the action and asks them to dig deep in a kind of psychological bleep test, challenging both their endurance and their capacity to love. The object of the training? Parenting a small child.

The piece will be performed by Mika Austin, a long-time collaborator of Mansfield’s, who brings her diverse background in Meisner Technique, stand-up comedy, the corporate world and motherhood to the role.

Says Mansfield of the one-to-one format: “I am intrigued by the intensity and intimacy of Basement’s one-to-one theatre provocation. On hearing of it I was struck with the idea of a relationship and a test that is at the same time universal and invisible, and which we take by and large on our own.

“Caring for a child is the ultimate one-to-one. It involves being alone (in your adultness) and together (in a familial oneness) – it’s an experience of self and other, selfthrough other.”

The demands the play focuses on are not just existential, she says. “The audience member will experience the utterly physical and the in-your-faceness of parenting.They’ll feel wrung out and wretched, as I reckon all parents do at one stage or another – at most stages in truth – but also, I hope, more critical and questioning of the state we find ourselves in (and I use the term ‘state’ quite pointedly) when we undergo this most human of training, at once a means to an end and an end in itself,.”

Mansfield says the opportunity to present this idea in a short-play was part of the inspiration.

“One statistic I came across says a small child will make a new demand of their parent every twenty seconds on average. The ‘on average’ is worth considering. That means during some periods the demands can be every five seconds.”

The period this piece will focus on will be one of an above-average level of demand. “Caring for others is frequently represented as being a walk in the park, and is certainly valued in that way in the economy, so I welcome those who think it is to step up to the mark on 24 Feb when the show opens.

The framework of a test was also compelling for her.

“I see the notion of ‘taking the test’ is everywhere – in gaming culture, through Fitbits and apps and performance reviews. This is a performance review which is constant, internal and external, but with no agreed standards. That makes it the most difficult to measure and I think most of us taking this test feel, at some stage, we don’t measure up to whichever standards we are following, wittingly or unwittingly. But it’s not a game, you can’t actually quit, and you will never get a raise. It’s real. There are real humans involved. And they don’t forgive you. Well, they might. But only because of the love.”
Mansfield is thrilled to see the other shows on Basement’s Fringe programme contain a common theme of motherhood.

“When I was researching this idea I found the universality of the subject matter hasn’t translated into real-estate in the theatre scene. People aren’t representing mothering (or parenting more generally) proportionately to the time and emotional importance it takes up in our lives. I think this is a feminist issue. How could it not be? Women do most of this work. It doesn’t get dignified with the name ‘work’ in the public sphere because it’s unpaid, and we are all responsible for perpetuating that dichotomy – the one where women ask mothers of young children, ‘When are you going back to work?’, as though until then they are just sitting round eating caviar and chilling out while their 10-month-old does the dishes, changes their own nappy, looks after their older siblings and makes the family meal. At best, in this way of thinking, these “layabouts” are doing the nation of tax-payers a disservice; more commonly it’s a kind of treason.

“That’s something I want people to consider. To the extent art mirrors life, the mirror is pretty distorted. This is life. It is a whole lot of living, breathing life not getting air- and space-time.

Mansfield is interested in placing a political lens on the personal and domestic phenomenon of parenting.

“We’ve heard a recently about the direness of being a child in today’s Aotearoa-New Zealand. We’re hearing a little about the stresses upon carers, the mothers, the fathers, the grandparents in trying to provide the basics like food and shelter. I do want to see these macro issues explored in art and addressed in life, but I also want to explore the day-to-day aspects of parenting, and mothering in particular, which are micro, less material, more mundane, yet somehow critical.

“I think a lot of us don’t understand what motherhood is, even those who are going through it. We don’t necessarily have an economy for it, a discourse. We don’t know how to value it in the face of the undermining that goes on from inside and outside the mother-child relationship.

“I hope this play goes some way towards providing some of that understanding and value.”

This Is What You Signed Up For is a ten-minute theatre experience and runs 24-28 February at the Basement Theatre, Lower Greys Avenue, Auckland Central as part of Auckland Fringe Festival running 20 February - 4 March 2018.
ENDS

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