Play about adoption reunion coming to London this March
I’m looking forward to seeing new play Giving Up Marty - tickets on sale now…
Booking now open for a new play about adoption reunion, Giving Up Marty. I’m very much looking forward to seeing this play performed in London, especially as I supported the playwright Karen Bartholomew to get crowdfunding back in the autumn.
Two identities, no identity, identity shattered - the adoption conundrum.
Joel is found by his birth mum and sister. He’s only eighteen and scared.
Identity means a lot, particularly to a teenager. His life is about to change forever.
Until now he’s just known Mum, Dad and his sister. Life is safe, settled and secure. Yes, he’s been curious about his origins but no more than that. As he turns eighteen, much to everyone’s surprise, it’s Martha, his birth mother and Melissa, his birth sister who come looking for him. The events that follow, leave Joel embroiled in a family history, that changes his life and identity forever.
There’s long been a fascination with blood ties and those broken, reunited and reshaped. Adoption reunion is epic and complex in nature and never easy, but it's this unease that needs to be heard.
Motormouse Productions presents Giving Up Marty, a brand new play by Karen Bartholomew. Spare and gutsy, it takes no prisoners.
'This important piece of theatre! It truly represents a ‘slice of life’ that often is not presented or explored.'
'Anything that demystifies adoption is good thing.'
'It is not something that is ever going to disappear from our western nuclear family societal structure. I do not have any friend who does not know someone who is one of those characters.'
'You don’t often see this stuff on stage/film/tv that deals with so many sides of the adoption story.'
Previous work
London Pub Theatres ★★★★ ‘Poignant, funny and beautifully accurate’
Everything Theatre ★★★★ ‘Many theatre lovers have missed this gem of a play that deserves more exposure'
Remote Goat ★★★★ 'Death explored in a brave way'
Scotsman ★★★'Neville has a bright eye for what, in the early seventies, passed for neat ideas and natty outfits, dressing her set with the kitschiest of tastes and peppering her monologue with some great one-liners... '
The Stage ★★★ 'Both writing and acting are well observed and Neville keeps up a strong rapport with her audience'
ABOUT THE COMPANY
Motormouse Productions is a female-led company based in the South East. We tackle challenging topics with a political, social and cultural flavour, always injecting humour where it counts. Our work seeks to engage and benefit local communities wherever possible.
We have toured and performed in new writing festivals, London fringe and regional theatres. In 2017 our play 'God's Waiting Room' told the story of two sisters dealing with their mother’s impending death. We connected with hospices, death cafes and the NHS, who went on to commission performances and bespoke theatre for their end-of-life services. We have steadily built a reputation for authentic and robust theatre created in Kent. Our work has kindly been supported by Arts Council England, Unity Theatre Trust, Kent Arts Investment Award and the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation.
New play seeking funding: "a tribute to adopted people"
Show your support for ‘Giving Up Marty’ a new play about adoption and reunion by UK adoptee Karen Bartholomew
Watch the trailer for ‘Giving Up Marty’ and pledge your support to get the play funded and on the stage in the UK.
There are just 13 days left to get this new play by UK adoptee Karen Bartholomew on the stage. If we can get this play funded it will be of interest and support to adoptees, adoptive families and birth/first families everywhere. Is it so rare there are any plays about adoption, particularly ones written by adoptees so please show your support.
The trailer for Giving Up Marty
A few words from Karen about why she wrote the play
“I am adopted and was reunited with my birth family many years ago. Every storyline I have ever seen on television, film and to a lesser extent stage (if, at all), has never resonated one ounce of truth for me. I am not alone.
We received an Arts Council grant last year to research and develop the play. We played to Coram (adoption charity) - the response was overwhelming with so many adopted people and families associated with adoption grateful for a play that spoke a truth!
The play, like most of my writing, contains a humorous touch. You couldn't get through this subject without it. I have written the play to encourage people to think about adoption, specifically reunion which rarely has the fairytale ending, so often depicted in media and televised dramas. But the play is also not without hope, love, and reaffirmation.
Now, I want to bring to the stage with an amazingly talented creative team, a story that resonates and is respectful to everyone connected with adoption. The play also speaks to a wider audience and the relationships within the play are just as relevant to non-adopted families. This is a universal play and one we really want to share with you!”
Why I am supporting Karen in her mission to get her play on the UK stage?
To get more adoption narratives by adoptees out into the mainstream, it’s really important adoption is covered in the arts, including theatre. In fact, AdopteesOn devoted a whole season to this, so check out season three of AdopteesOn.
YOU – a play about adoption written and directed by adoptees
Review of YOU, the multi-award winning show about adoption, written and directed by adoptees
Review of YOU: the play, VAULT Festival, London, February 2018
When I heard about YOU: the play, there was no question I would be in the audience. I can’t remember ever watching a play solely about adoption, and certainly not one written and directed by adoptees. If I have watched a play about adoption (Blood Brothers in secondary school perhaps?) it was most definitely before coming out of the fog. I was excited and apprehensive to see how my reaction might differ now I know in my bones that adoption means loss.
Presented by Longsight Theatre and directed by Sarah Meadows, the play has won a number of awards. Performed in the round, we had a clear view of the action from all angles and a good view of the rest of the audience. Many audience members were in tears at points in the play and, given the staging and the size of the venue, it was almost impossible to be discreet about this. There was a very powerful feeling in the room and I could feel the weight of all the personal stories we carried as we watched this fictional story unfold.
Two actors Kathryn O’Reilly and Stephen Myott-Meadows played all the characters: Kathryn playing the birth mother, her mother and the adoptive mother; Stephen playing the biological father, the birth mother's father, the adoptive father and the adoptee. The narrative jumped in time over three decades, starting before the adopted person was conceived and ending with him knocking on his birth mother’s door as an adult. The actors were flawless in their quick shifts between characters and decades, changing their posture and expressions and summoning the necessary emotion on stage. I was mesmerised by O'Reilly switching from nervous adoptive mother to numb birth mother and loved the repeating imagery of the frosted window through which each first saw their son.
In this way all the different perspectives were represented and shown as they evolved over time. The adoptee had a small role and did not have many (any?) lines, which I presume was intentional to show the lack of voice and agency that we adoptees have.
The writer Mark Wilson and director Sarah Meadows later told me there was a technical reason for using only two actors to play all the roles in YOU. Mark said it meant the play could flow “like being taken downstream on a raft” without the interruptions of changing cast members. It also served to show we are all interconnected; we are all one – and any one of us could be the army lad, the disappointed mother, the pregnant daughter, etc. This technique worked really well to break down shame and increase empathy. I hope anyone not personally familiar with adoption would leave the play feeling less judgemental and knowing that adoption is not just something that affects other people.
I loved the balance of romance/magic and realism around how the couple met and the baby’s conception. Almost like a crystal ball us adoptees would like to look into to know how their birth parents met, and whether they were in love. (The kind of information non-adoptees probably know and take for granted.) It was also very interesting to contrast this with how the adoptive parents met and to watch their hopes of having a baby drained away and then channelled into a new “project”.
There were themes of shame – running through from the birth mother’s parents’ reaction to her getting pregnant, to her feelings of inadequacy when she received the letter from her adult son. There were also themes of choice, shown, for example, when the baby’s biological grandfather says with grim realisation, “I agreed to it”.
For me there was a harsh reality in the phrase “another woman’s baby”, particularly for many of my generation of adoptees who were brought up being told by their adoptive parents “you’re ours”, “you’re our longed-for child”, “you’re chosen and special”, while the other woman – the other mother – was not acknowledged.
The play covered the answers to many of questions adoptees have about their birth and first few hours or days of life, such as:
· Did you hold me / feed me?
· Did you (get to) say goodbye?
· Have you thought about me since?
The way the reunion was presented was very authentic, with the son receiving a response from his birth mother but not feeling ready to open her letter. As an adoptee in reunion I would have liked to see reunion covered in more depth, but the play is a great introduction to the themes and perspectives around adoption.
After the show we meet the playwright Mark Wilson. An adoptee himself, he said he cried buckets as he wrote the play and when I asked him is this was cathartic, he said yes, but catharsis is ongoing and not something that’s ever “done”.
I am committed to supporting adoptees in telling our stories in any and every way, but particularly in a non-verbal, creative way. Please let me know if you hear of any other projects like this that I can support. And do be sure to watch YOU: the play if/when it comes to a venue near you. I’ll tweet about it as soon as I have any information about new shows and/or a UK tour.