Camden People’s Theatre’s SPRINT Festival returns with a packed programme throughout March. London’s “best-established carnival of new and unusual theatre” features artists with bold ideas, artists who don’t play by the rules, and artists, in many instances, making their first professional work.
This is the sixth of a series of interviews highlighting artists and work within the Festival, as I chat with Karla Shacklock about her show, Niplash.
Highly physical and visual, hilariously raw and heartbreakingly real, Niplash blows open the multifaceted world of infant feeding, from the cultural expectations and taboos, to the lack of support and understanding. Through humour, honesty, and vulnerability, Karla opens a space where our stories are given a voice, and we are powerfully reminded that they matter. That we matter. And that art can be both balm and battle cry.
Karla shares her experience of feeding three children and weaves into the show stories and feeding paraphernalia kindly donated by dozens of m/others across the country. Niplash acknowledges breast, chest and formula milk feeding, does not place one form of feeding above another and seeks to honour the myriad of experiences and complex journeys. Niplash is for the mum who was spat at for bottle feeding her baby in the street, the mum told to put her tits away in a café, the mum scorned for feeding a baby with different skin colour to her own, the mum who only dares pump for her baby with the curtains closed at home. For all the m/others. For all of us.
Where: Camden People’s Theatre.
When: 5 and 6 Mar, 9pm.
Ticket link: https://cptheatre.co.uk/whatson/Niplash
Your show, Niplash, is showing at SPRINT next week. What can you tell us about it?
Niplash is a performance, participatory arts & social activism project bringing parents/carers together to explore the hidden crisis around infant feeding.
With the UK having the lowest breastfeeding rates in the world, and infant feeding remaining one of the least researched areas of maternal health policy, something needs to change, and Niplash strives to be a catalyst and a voice for this urgent LACRIVISM.
Fresh from doing a full Niplash Weekender in Bristol, we are now bringing the performance element of the project to SPRINT this week.
How did you start in the business?
Having originally trained as a dancer, I toured my own work in the UK and across Europe for about 15 years. Then I had three children, and my career had to respond accordingly! I spent eight years working as a Movement Director whilst grappling with the early days of parenthood.
Niplash marks a significant return to making and touring my own work, and I couldn’t think of a more perfect marriage between my life and my art – my children are very much at the heart of this new show.
How did you develop this show, and what should audiences expect from it?
Expect to see a highly physical and visual, hilariously raw and heartbreakingly real, solo show in which I share my own experience of feeding three children, and also weave in stories and feeding paraphernalia kindly donated by dozens of m/others across the country.
Niplash is for the mum who was spat at for bottle-feeding her baby in the street, the mum told to put her tits away in a cafe, the mum scorned for feeding a baby with different skin colour to her own, the mum who only dare pump for her baby with the curtains closed at home. For all the m/others. For all of us.
Through humour, honesty, and vulnerability, I will open a space where our stories are given a voice, and we are powerfully reminded that they matter. That we matter. And that art can be both balm and battle cry.
Liberation via lactivism. Both healing balm and urgent battle cry. Expect to see milk, tears and confetti.
How has your show evolved since it was first planned?
Niplash began as something quite personal, an exploration of my own experiences feeding my three children, But, as I began to share work-in-progress performances of the work, I was stunned by the intense need from my audiences to share their own stories, and so I began to weave these into the tapestry of the work.
As the story donation bank grew and grew, I realised it would never be possible to fully honour all of the voices in the show alone, and so I began to dream of something bigger, a space where parents and carers could come together to be seen, heard, and celebrated.
This dream was realised this weekend in Bristol in the first-ever Niplash Weekender, where hundreds of parents and children joined for art exhibitions and installations, parent-accessible daylight and twilight performances of Niplash featuring m/other choirs and their babies, sharing circles, creative journaling, and an afterparty.
What’s next for you?
After SPRINT Festival, we head straight to Norwich Arts Centre to perform as part of the Tilted Women Festival. Then we have a moment to catch our breath before more gigs start in May. The mega plan is to find more partners and venues to host Niplash Weekenders, where in each city we visit, we invite local m/other creatives, artists and infant feeding specialists to join the campaign.
The LACITIVISM goes on!