Fox - a play examining new motherhood comes to The Spring, Havant - with special parent and baby performance

Riddled with guilt about her lack of mothering skills, a previous miscarriage, and her behaviour towards the homeless man outside, she spirals downwards towards the realisation that it is her who needs help as well as him...

Inspired by true events, Fox tells an honest and insightful story of new motherhood and the battles parents can face within an increasingly isolated society.

Having witnessed friends suffer severely from postnatal depression, Fox’s writer and performer Kate Guicciardi’s writing strives to normalise having more conversations around loneliness and reaching out for support.

The show made it’s debut at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2019, but is now on its pandemic-delayed debut UK tour.

‘I actually wrote it about eight years ago when I'd had my first child,’ explains Kate, ‘and we were living in a small one-bedroom flat in Clapton in East London. Then one day a man came and sat on the wall outside the flat and he stared there for a month.

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‘He sat there all day and slept there at night, and I became obsessed with watching him because I was always at home with the baby. I had all these different feelings, partly wanting to help him and wanting to make friends with him and partly being anxious and scared and wishing he wasn't there.

‘It was quite a struggle between the two. I couldn't hear anything that was going on outside the window, but I was watching everything.’

While Kate’s own pregnancy and introduction to parenthood ran smoothly, it was not the same for all her friends.

‘Some of my closest friends who'd been pregnant at the same time as me, they ended up getting very bad postnatal depression. These were people with no previous issues with mental health, they'd planned the births and had good pregnancies, so it came as a real shock to me, particularly as I was having quite a positive experience.

‘Nobody had warned me that this could have been me as well, and that it's so prevalent. People warn you about getting a bit teary or a bit blue in the first few weeks, but the extent to which these friends were suffering really opened my eyes – why are we not talking about this more?

‘These were all people with full support systems and everything in place, so it really came as a shock. Now I'm aware how common it is and how it can effect anyone – it can be a chemical imbalance or hormonal imbalance, how it can be linked to your birth, it can be hereditary, it can be all sorts of things, and it can happen to anyone.’

The play draws on her friends’ experiences plus her own research.

‘Despite having a positive experience myself I could definitely relate to some of the more negative elements – the isolation, the loneliness, the boredom, the exhaustion, some of these things which every parent experiences in those early days.’

There is often a pressure for new parents to project an impression that everything is great and going wonderfully, and as Kate says: ‘That's how the play begins – she's playing the role of mum: “Look at my nice flat and lovely baby, I'm a mum, and I'm doing well. I don't sleep, but I'm loving it...”

‘But as time goes on and she sees how this man is vulnerable and needs help, gradually through the play and towards the ends he realises she is even more vulnerable and she is the one who should be seeking help.’

The play’s title, Fox, comes from Kate’s own relationship with vulpes vulpes and relating it to the man outside her home.

‘I've always lived in London and urban foxes are a common thing – they're everywhere. The feelings I had towards this man really made me think of my feelings towards foxes. Part of you is like: “oh, they're beautiful”, and you want to go stroke them like you would a cat or dog; then the other half is: “oh my goodness, you could attack me and maim, you're filthy, get away from my house”. It's that sense of threat, but something you live amongst, and also have warm feelings towards as well. It's that struggle – do I trust you, don't I trust you?’

Kate did eventually speak with the man, but the encounter is in the play, so: no spoilers!

At most stops on the tour, there are two performances – one in the evening for adults, and a baby-friendly one in the daytime.

This is important to Kate: ‘I have always been a big theatre-goer, it's a massive part of my life, both participating and watching. I remember when I had my kids I felt like that was something I was shut out of for a bit, and I would have loved that opportunity to go and see something that wasn't a kids' show, that wasn't a singalong, that wasn’t a puppet show, that was just something for me because my baby's not going to even register it anyway!

‘If I could go to a show and feed them and change them and still enjoy the show, then that's a real gift. And it's a show about a new mum – that's our biggest target audience, so why would we cut them out?’

The day we speak, Kate has just finished one of the daytime shows with about 30 babies in attendance.

‘As hard as it was today, performing with 30 screaming children, what the parents got from it was everything I would want for them to get from the show. Maybe I have to speak a bit louder, maybe it's a bit distracting, but it was worth it.’

People are also keen to share their own experiences after the play.

‘The feedback has been really amazing from people who have their stories to share and are very willing to share. That's been really nice. People are saying this is exactly what I felt, or this is exactly what happened to me or my niece, or my daughter, or my friend or my partner...

‘This is happening everywhere. If we talk about it, we normalise it, we make people feel seen and less alone and maybe we help them in some way.’

Fox is at The Spring Arts Centre in Havant at 8pm on Thursday, March 23, with a parent and baby performance at 10.30am on Friday, March 24. Go to thespring.co.uk.

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