How Blak sisterhood transformed this playwright’s motherhood journey

Playwright Jorjia Gillis feels like she’s about to give birth to two babies this year – the child she’s currently six months pregnant with and the world premiere of her new play Mum Club for Griffin Theatre Company.

The comedy stars Stephanie Somerville as Sadie, a Martu woman and new mum who has moved from Western Australia to Sydney. Sadie has no community and is dealing with the aftermath of a traumatic birth, so joins an exclusive inner-west mums’ club that turns out to be heavy on the maternal judgement.

“What I wanted to show as somebody who’d been through it [and] was not shying away from those lonely, tough, raw moments,” Gillis says. “Struggling with breastfeeding, mastitis, feeling ostracised. And also that thing where the mum club, I think everyone had the best intentions, but it felt at times like you were going back to high school.”

The play draws heavily on Gillis’s own experiences after giving birth to her first child, a daughter, in 2020, in which she felt the burden of isolation.

“Literally the week after I had her, we had the COVID lockdown, so I was separated from my family, my community. I didn’t know anything about postnatal PTSD or anxiety and had a lot of stuff going on from the birth, so I joined a mum club, which was very heightened because of the COVID world,” Gillis recalls.

“I had a lot of funny stories from all these adventures that I tried to go on to meet people, but I just really struggled. I had always thought, ‘oh, maybe I’ll write this, but it’s just so personal’.”

When Gillis, a recipient of the prestigious Balnaves Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Fellowship at Belvoir in 2020, applied for the 2024 Griffin Studio artist development program she had been planning to pitch a dark psychological thriller. However when it came time for the meeting she found herself spilling forth a completely different concept.

“I had no intention of pitching this,” says Gillis. “I thought no one cares about mums on stage, who’s going to watch this? And in the interview they asked me, ‘What are you most excited about?’ and it just came out. After the interview, I went to my family and I was like, ‘Oh well, stuffed that up.’

“Then [Griffin] was like we love it. It started as a one-woman show and I very quickly realised there are so many amazing characters that I wanted to showcase, we need a proper comedic ensemble for this.”

The rehearsals for Mum Club have looked a little unusual with lessons on how to swaddle and education on placentas, a necessity given that no one in the cast of five is a mother. The show also took the family-friendly step of programming two babes-in-arms sessions for the play (both of which are sold out).

As a Budawang/Yuin woman herself, Gillis’ play examines the experience of Blak motherhood and draws on the real-life support she received from other Indigenous mums. Sadie finds solace in a connection with a character she meets outside of her mothers’ club at the Aboriginal Medical Service in Redfern.

“She’s based on four women who really shaped my motherhood experience, who were all Aboriginal.