The conversation about juggling a career in the arts with family life is too often focused on mothers, warns Natasha Tripney.
“We need to find a way of focusing on parents working within the arts,” David Mercatali insists. Having separate conversations about the needs of mothers and fathers isn’t hugely helpful, he continues, and if the culture is to change there needs to be a shift in the way people talk and think about working in the arts as a parent.
I recently wrote an article for The Stage (April 2, page 6) about mothers who make theatre and how they balance the demands of their career and their family. There seems to be a real appetite for having these conversations at the moment. Social media is playing a considerable role in this. New Facebook groups for theatremakers who are also parents are springing up all the time.
At the Cutting Edge conference on British Theatre in Hard Times, which took place on April 25, Samuel West, in his keynote speech, discussed how his engagement with theatre had changed since becoming a father and, at the same event, Erica Whyman urged that questions about how to cope with parenthood should be posed to men more often, something with which Mercatali clearly agrees. A father of two, the oldest soon to start primary school, he’s had a fairly full-on year so far, directing Philip Ridley’s Radiant Vermin at Soho Theatre and Alice Birch’s exquisite, fist-like Little Light at the Orange Tree... Keep reading on The Stage
“We need to find a way of focusing on parents working within the arts,” David Mercatali insists. Having separate conversations about the needs of mothers and fathers isn’t hugely helpful, he continues, and if the culture is to change there needs to be a shift in the way people talk and think about working in the arts as a parent.
I recently wrote an article for The Stage (April 2, page 6) about mothers who make theatre and how they balance the demands of their career and their family. There seems to be a real appetite for having these conversations at the moment. Social media is playing a considerable role in this. New Facebook groups for theatremakers who are also parents are springing up all the time.
At the Cutting Edge conference on British Theatre in Hard Times, which took place on April 25, Samuel West, in his keynote speech, discussed how his engagement with theatre had changed since becoming a father and, at the same event, Erica Whyman urged that questions about how to cope with parenthood should be posed to men more often, something with which Mercatali clearly agrees. A father of two, the oldest soon to start primary school, he’s had a fairly full-on year so far, directing Philip Ridley’s Radiant Vermin at Soho Theatre and Alice Birch’s exquisite, fist-like Little Light at the Orange Tree... Keep reading on The Stage