Clare Pointing: With Child
Pleasance Courtyard (Cellar)
31st July – 25th August (not 14th)
15:30 (60mins)
Book Tickets
Clare Pointing (“a tour-de-force” *****– The Upcoming) brings her bold and thought-provoking solo show With Child to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, introducing six very different women with just one thing in common.
With Child is a rousing reaction to the expectations and pressures society places on women to be maternal, kind, considerate and nurturing. This frank series of “talking heads” style monologues invites audiences to take a glimpse at the everyday lives of six character who refuse to be defined by their pregnancies and encourages us to question our preconceptions of expectant mothers. Inspired by the work of writers such as Victoria Wood and Alan Bennet, the warts and all portrayals of these punchy and powerful characters will make you laugh, cry and cringe.
Writer and performer, Clare Pointing is passionate about storytelling. Her work reflects many of her own experiences and by exploring misunderstood, misjudged characters she challenges perceptions and prejudice. Clare has performed With Child as a work in progress throughout her own pregnancy allowing the show to evolve – growing and developing alongside her baby.
Clare explained “We rarely see pregnant women on stage or screen unless pregnancy is the focus of the scene. I wanted to show my characters simply as they are…because women do not necessarily transform when they become mothers, at least not in my experience. They are still who they are, women, not saints, just people capable of all the usual human emotions. We might like them, we might not!”
Clare Pointing was one of the founding members of theatre company The River People, and performed and created work with the company from 2006 to 2010, touring with their two award-winning shows: The Ordinaries in An Awkward Silence and Lilly Through the Dark. The company won the Edinburgh International Festival Award in 2009 and Total Theatre Award for Best Emerging Company. Clare then went on from here to perform with theatres and companies such as Little Angel Theatre, RSC, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Lyric Hammersmith, Polka Theatre, Pins and Needles and Manchester Royal Exchange. Clare’s first piece of writing Delphine transferred to New York’s off Broadway Soho Playhouse and London’s Leicester Square Theatre following a critically acclaimed run at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2016.
