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No Mother, No Future investigates how theatre and performance use pregnancy loss to represent a lost future. Spanning the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, this book analyzes performances that challenge dominant cultural scripts linking motherhood with futurity and nationhood in Canada and the United States.
Combining intersectional feminism with theories of reproductive justice and reproductive futurity, this work interrogates how pregnancy loss-especially when experienced by those excluded from white, heteronormative ideals of motherhood-is often portrayed as a societal failure. It examines reproductive loss not only as a dramatic device but also as a political reality shaped by systemic violence, including slavery, forced sterilization, and child welfare policies that disproportionately target Indigenous and Black communities. Through in-depth analyses and original interviews with playwrights, directors, and actors, this volume offers a critical framework for understanding how performance stages reproductive loss as a site of resistance.
As the first book-length study of motherhood and reproduction in Canadian theatre, it is essential reading for scholars and students in theatre, performance studies, feminist theory, cultural studies, and reproductive justice.
List of contents
AcknowledgementsSetting the Stage and Staging the Future: Baby Makers as Nation Makers
An Interview with Maev Beaty About Her Performance of
Secret Life of a Mother1. "A Child Would Die Here": Motherhood as Nationhood in
Marsh Hay and Still Stands the HouseAn Interview with Richard Plant on Directing the First Production of
Marsh Hay 2. "Give Me Children, Or Else I Die": The Limits of Radical Motherhood in
The Handmaid's Tale and its Television Adaptation
An Interview with Bruce Miller, the Showrunner of
The Handmaid's Tale Television Series
3. "We are
Still Here": The Indigenous Child and Futurity in
Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing and
Tombs of the Vanishing IndianAn Interview with Yvette Nolan About Directing
Tombs of the Vanishing Indian 4. "The Future Stops Here": Racial Reproductive Futurity in
Harlem Duet and
Beatrice ChancyAn Interview with Djanet Sears About Writing and Directing
Harlem Duet Afterword: "Resistance that's Embodied"
Index
About the author
Kailin Wright is Associate professor of Canadian theatre and literature at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, Canada.
