To be or not to be a mother: doubtful, fraught, and denied access to motherhood in contemporary Catalan theatre

Abstract

Like many other regions in Europe, Catalonia has seen significant changes in the demographics of motherhood over recent decades, with decreasing fertility rates and an increase in the average age of women at the birth of the first child. Together with increased social awareness of gender and identity issues such as gestational loss or the sexual and reproductive rights of people with disabilities, this changing landscape seems to have had a noteworthy impact on contemporary Catalan theatre. Indeed, throughout the long 2010s, a significant number of female-authored plays focused on motherhood premiered in Catalan venues, and a significant portion of these addressed doubtful, fraught, and denied access to motherhood. This essay analyses four important works associated with this trend: Júlia & The Empty Lot (2018) and To Be a Mother (2021) by Clàudia Cedó, Conversations With My Uterus and Other Interlocutors (2018) by Núria Planes Llull, and Stigmas (2019) by Concha Milla. These plays respectively address the experience of perinatal loss, the desire of women with disabilities to become mothers, doubts concerning one’s maternal desire, and the consequences of infertility and assisted reproductive technology processes. The analysis is based on dramatic and video criticism, accompanied by a study of performance documentation and paratexts. This essay contends that the analysed plays shed light on the tension between hegemonic narratives around motherhood and the actual experiences of contemporary Catalan women in terms of access to motherhood, which can be fraught with social, political, or physiological obstacles, as well as denied to certain subjects who have historically been excluded from womanhood, such as women with disabilities. In so doing, the plays expand the available narratives for what we understand as motherhood while elaborating feminist responses to the lived experiences they bring to the stage.