TONTS. - Matrescence Festival with Michelle Hall

Episode Date: November 16, 2025

Welcome to eleventh episode of TONTS Season 5 Matrescence Festival edition, join us as we look back through our Melbourne festival from March 2025.Today we have a special performance from Michelle Hall, Michelle is an independent performance maker, teaching artist, mentor, arts worker, community organiser, yoga practitioner and mother living and working on Noongar Boodja. She has trained in devising, physical theatre, Clown, Butoh and Contemporary Dance with various companies including Teatro de Complicite (UK), Pan Theatre (Fra), Laban London (UK), Giovanni Fusetti (Italy), Café Reason Butoh (UK), Augusto Boal and Cardboard Citizens (UK). To watch Michelle's performance follow this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HmNCe2sYsIAnd for more of Michelle's work you can head to her website: https://thedirtymother.com/michelle-hall/For more from Claire you can head to: https://www.clairetonti.com/ or her instagram @clairetontiFor more from Lizzy you can head to: https://www.lizzyhumber.com/ or her instagram @lizzyhumberAnd to keep up to date with past and upcoming Matrescence festivals you can follow @matrescencefestival on instagram or go to https://www.matrescencefestival.co.ukOriginal theme music: Free by Claire TontiEditing: Maisie JGSocial Media: Surabhi Pradhan Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which I create, speak and write today. There are wondry people of the Kulin Nation and pay my respect to their elders past, present and merging, acknowledging that the sovereignty of this land has never been ceded. I want to acknowledge the people who have given birth on this land, raised children on this land for generations connected to country and spirit. Hello, welcome back to a very special edition of Tons Season 5. My name is Claire Tonti. And I'm Lizzie Humber and we are the co-founder of Metrescent's Festival.

Listen along with us as we share live episodes from the Metrescent Festival in Australia that took place over two days in March 2025. I have the really great pleasure of introducing Michelle Hall as our next guest. Michelle Hall is a talented performance maker. director, teaching artist and facilitator based on Wajuk Nunga Bhudja. With a practice that spans devised performance, autobiographical storytelling and intercultural collaboration, Michelle brings a wealth of experience from around the world. Her training includes prestigious institutions such as Teatro de Complicite in the UK,

Pan Theatre France, Laban Trinity in the UK, Forum Theatre with Augusto Boisle in Brazil and more. Michelle's work is rooted in. creative learning, embodied expression and powerful storytelling. And Lizzie is going to do a little extra intro for her. So this is a performance lecture that Michelle has put together. She has done research into maternal rage and also references her own experiences, which have contributed to a book, which she speaks about. But Michelle is, like I said, a theatre maker.

So we would actually recommend that you watch the YouTube version of this if you want to see the visuals, because this is a performance lecture. So Michelle wears various costumes throughout. She begins today with a blonde wig on and a jumpsuit, and she calls to various members of the audience to come and help her with various props. So she dons a sash, some flowers, and she's given symbolic objects which represent babies. There's also an ironing board on stage, and she's doing all of her own cues from the laptop on the ironing board. There's a suitcase with various wigs inside and costumes and then there's a flip chart on the stage. She actually says everything that she's picking up and everything that's written on the flip chart so you can absolutely listen along.

But if you would prefer, in our show notes, we have the YouTube recording so you can actually see what Michelle is doing. So both are excellent and yeah, we just recommend that you watch as well as listen. Just to let you know there's a content warning for this episode. Michelle references suicide and themes of maternal rage and she also does a parody of anger as well Hi everyone I made it I made it

I'm mother of the year um yes I'm wait no whatever's next no you need to keep bring the sash quickly please Laura yes thank you

No, you need to, you need to, who are your volunteers? Okay, this is my award ceremony. It's not going so great at the moment, Laura. We did chat about this. Yes, the flowers, thank you. Mother of the year. Okay, now, who's some, yes, yes, you, Amy. Blue bear, Blue Bear.

Oh, it's a boy, a son, an heir to the throne. Another man, baby. Hooray! And now, that one, that one, that one. Oh, this time, it's a girl. I feel so blessed. I always wanted one of each. Yes, yes, clap me, yes.

And now, Amy, with these two, I'm definitely going to need that bottle. And I'm parched from the red eye flight from W.A. Let me tell you. Definitely going to need a sip of this. You put champagne in it. You absolute devil. You're hilarious Melbourne people. You Victorian people that like alcohol.

Oh, and just the last, the final touch. Have you messed it up? What have you done? Thank you. Yes, bring it up, please. To complete the picture, the matrimonial veil. put it on me. Thank you.

Yes, that'll have to do. This will very much please, my late Nana, Pearl Hall, W.A's state lawn bowl champion of 1982. Pearl's life advice to me was Michelle, don't you go having children out of wedlock? Well, look at me now, mum, nan, grandma, or mother of the year. Woo! Clap me.

Woo! Mother. Mother. Mommy. Mom. Mama. Mamma. Mamma.

Mother. Mucin. Mutta. Alamo. Ma. Mata. Ma. Ma.

Mother. Mother was the one. Mother was the woman the whole world had imagined to death. The trouble was that we too had all sorts of wild imaginings about what mother should be. And we were cursed with the desire to not be disappointing. I'm not Mother of the Year. Surprise. I'm just Michelle Hall.

I'm just a mum. I'm just here. I'm just perimenopausal. I'm just a bit forgetful sometimes and a bit shit with technology. But I'll just use a script just in case I miss a line. I'm just here to share with you my experience. of the rage mothers don't talk about,

just to ask and keep asking, what is mum rage? And why do we have it? In 2020, in the midst of a COVID lockdown meltdown, a shadow pandemic catastrophe, I saw a post on the mothers who make Facebook page. It was a call out for mothers who would be willing to talk about their experience, of anger and rage.

The call-out was from the author and mother, Minna Dubin. Minna was in the process of writing a book after her 2019 New York Times article, The Rage Mothers Don't Talk About, went viral. From the isolation of my Panny Dem panic room, my bathroom, I replied to Minna's post. Some of the things I shared with Minna about my rage, where I thought it came from,

and how it was changing my life, ended up in her book. This one, Mum Rage, a crisis of modern motherhood. Some of the questions Minna asked me in our interview are in this lecture, and I'll be quoting and paraphrasing from Minna's book throughout. Following Minna's lead, when I talk about Mum Rage and Mothers in general, I will use she her pronouns. And this is because Mum Rage is not divorced from Jen. As Minna says, I use she-her pronouns to honour the role sexism, misogyny and patriarchy play in the oppression of mothers, which leads to anger.

These power dynamics, in addition to the gendered expectations of mothers, affect all mothering people, regardless of their gender identity. And that brings me to my first punch point. Mum rage is gendered. Minna again, she says, usually when we picture motherhood we see wobbly steps taken on delirious, dimpled legs, kids saying the cutest things ever, soft arms and heads nestled against our necks.

These images depict a part of motherhood, the most popular part. The predominance of this googly eye cooing narrative silences mums by erasing the harder parts of modern motherhood, the social isolation, the 24-7 labour, the physical toll of caregiving, birth injuries, the motherhood penalty, and the economic hit that impacts mother's earning potential for the rest of our life. Deborah Levy wrote in her living memoir, The Cost of Living, that to strip the wallpaper of the

family house in which the comfort and happiness of men and children have been the priority is to find behind it an unthanked, neglected, exhausted woman. It requires skill, time, dedication and empathy to create... Where am I? I told you I'd lose my spot, also I need my glasses. It requires skill, time, dedication and empathy to create. a home that everyone functions well in. It is an act of immense generosity to be the architect of everyone else's well-being. This task is still perceived mostly as women's work, and consequently there are all kinds of words used to belittle this huge endeavour of care.

If the mother has been impregnated by society, then she is playing everyone's wife and mother. She has built the story the old patriarchy has designed for the nuclear heterosexual family. To not feel at home in her family home is the beginning of the story of society and its female discontents. If she is not too defeated by the societal story she has enacted with hope, pride, happiness, ambivalence and rage, she will try to change the story. In 2020, my impulse to tell Minna about the secrets of my imperfect family house, the domestic inequality, assumption of traditional roles, the weaponised incompetence, grew stronger than the

impulse to hide. After 11 years inside the family house, I was ready to tear the wallpaper off. I was ready to change the story. And do you want to be anonymous? I can change, you know, your partner's name if you want or anything. Okay, I think I'm just using first names anyway, but it would say, you know, details like about giving birth in the UK and being in Australia. I want to use the city, is that okay?

My name in Minna's book is Lauren. Asking to be disguised was a good choice. When I tell people that I'm making work about Mom Rage, people can react quite badly. men often demand that I justify my rage to them. A couple of blokes have even cornered me at social events, shouting in my face, why are you angry? What have you got to be angry about?

Minna notes that with the way society punishes angry women and shames mothers who step out of the domestic box of caregiving, it has likely been undesirable, if not unsafe, for mothers to preserve their own mother. mum rage history. And so we arrive at my second punch point. Mum rage is historical. Mother was the woman the whole world had imagined to death. It proved very hard to renegotiate the world's nostalgic fantasy about our purpose in life. Bring me the eye the eye, bring me the eye!

Bring me they on. Yeah, mothers, shrews, witches, bitches, bitches, hair, nags, castrated, man haters, son of a bitch, bastards, motherfuckers, those angry mothers, those angry mothers, those angry mothers, those angry mothers, those mothers. Words. Endless words I've said to serve the moment. Now it makes me proud to tell the truth. Here I stand and here I struck

and here my work is done. And you, you trial me like some desperate woman. My heart is steel. Well, you know. Praise me. Blame me. You choose. It is all one.

Tina! Tina! Tina! Tina! Tina! Tina! Tina! Bring me the axe.

Here lies Agamemnon. My husband made a corpse by this right hand. A masterpiece of justice. of justice. Done is done. Thank you. Yeah, well, as you can see, Mumredge isn't a new thing in popular culture and history.

It's been around for a while, actually. UK theatre director Emma Hall says, men have been writing female anger for two millennia, and we've called them geniuses for it. The world is obsessed with angry mothers. I wonder if that's because maternal rage seems so mysterious to people, like it comes out of nowhere. To me, maternal rage is a well that runs deep,

and at the same time can appear as a sudden clarifying fire. Once you've been licked by the flames of your own rage, you'll never run cold again, and nor would you want to, but more about that later. First, let's go back. I just performed for you the done is done speech

from the Greek tragedy, the Oristaya, written by a man, Iskilis. It's a dramatisation of the first patriarchal court of law ever in Western culture. Trial by jury. Who's on trial? Clitumnestra, the bad mother.

Iskolas wrote Clit, That's not a coincidence. Clitamnestra, the original 5th century Mad, Bad Mother for the play, the Oristaya. I call her Clit for short. Clit makes her done-is-done speech after she slits the throat of her husband, Agamemnon, and this is one of the earliest dramatizations we have

of an enraged mother. The rage that motivates Clitamnestra comes from grief and trauma when her husband, Agamemnon, kills their daughter Iphaginia. Basically, the husband, the dad, tricks the virgin daughter by telling him to come with her to the coast

for a beach wedding to Achilles, but instead, he has her head chopped off as a sacrifice to the god Zeus so that he'll have a better chance of winning some war abroad. Therefore, you could say, fair enough, Clitamestra, rightly so went about getting justice

for her innocent daughter's life. But even so, despite the father's crime of femicide, In the court of patriarchal law, it will be the mother who pays the ultimate price for acting on her rage and avenging her daughter's death. But wait for it. The ultimate punishment for Clitumnestra is not the death penalty. No.

She's already dead anyway because her son, Orestes, who the play is named after, of course, name after the son. Her son Orestes killed her in revenge and he sided with his dad. No. The punishment for the raging mother. and in a way, for all mothers 2,000 years later, is that her murder, Clitomnestra's murder, her matricide, is deemed not a crime.

The God Apollo declares to the court that the son's killing of his mother is not a crime because the mother is not truly a blood relative of the son. She is merely the container for the seed of the father. sensing a theme anyone and when did you when did you start to experience reach

I started to experience it like the wording rage is sort of I say sort of anger slash rage because it's not always extreme and for me like rage is sort of more extreme but I started feeling those more not extreme but bigger feelings

which could blur into rage when my dad made an attempt on his life. The culture's impulse to extinguish angry women can be traced back centuries. Angry mothers are still often equated with murderers or abusers.

The 25 worst moms in history, Google it. Anger, mum, bad moms, that's what you'll get. There is no room in the claustrophobic box of mother for anything other than self-sacrificing, gentle and deferential. You're either Glenda the Good Witch or Joan Crawford, mummy dearest.

Minna writes about the relationship between harm and rage, and she says, given this history of punishing women for being angry, I want to be careful not to conflate women's anger with harm. Rage is a natural reaction to the cultural disempowerment of mothers, but that doesn't free us of responsibility. for how we express it. Those on the receiving end of mum rage can be our children,

but not always. Rage can be directed at partners, the system, or everyone around us. Mum rage can turn inward in self-harm. Mums who rage are in pain, even if we don't know it. And that brings me to my third punch point. Mum rage is system.

is systemic. Mother was the woman the whole world had imagined to death. We had not yet understood that mother, as imagined and politicised by the societal system, was a delusion. The world loved the delusion more than it loved the mother. It sounds like you and your husband share some of the responsibilities

with taking turns for drop-off and pick-up and your husband taking care of your son on the weekends while you work, but then there was also some different feelings later on about just feeling like everything was on you. So I wanted to hear about that. Yeah, yeah, that's correct. He does do those things. I think one of the kernels of my rage were we got married and had a baby and then I didn't realize that for us as a couple that meant I was essentially going to become his coach and sort of quasi-parent to teach him how to be a parent. And that's to do with his family of origin

because he comes from a very traditional conservative British kind of Royal Air Force background where the father is very much the head of the family. And doesn't do any domestic or child-rearing work and is quite vocal about that. He's quite proud to announce he's never changed the NAPI. And I had to teach him like everything, the emotional, social, practical aspects

of raising a child and being a family. over time, over time that really ground me down because I started to go, why is this my role to do this? I have to spend all this time coaching my partner to be a 21st century parent. The world, according to your mom, doing the washing. Capital.

Your mom does the washing. You pay her a dollar. You get her to do your mate's washing. Your mate pays you $50. Communism. Your mom does the washing. You do the washing. Every night you salute a picture of your dad.

Socialism. Your mom does the washing. You do the cooking. Everybody is happy, in fury. Feudalism. Your mom does the washing and pays you tax. colonialism you barge into your mom's room claim you discovered your mom's room dump all your

dirty clothes on the floor mansplaining your mom does the washing you tell her how best to do the washing you have never done the washing same-sex marriage your moms do the washing patriarchy your mom doesn't exist the washing is mysteriously done turfism your mom doesn't want your other mom doing the Good afternoon, welcome to my lecture. Mum rage is systemic, and as Maria Rose-Callis articulates in the Wages for Housework Movement at the 1970s, Mum Rage is, what does she say? She says, women's unpaid labour in the home has been the pillar upon which the exploitation of wage workers has been built.

Yes, let's put that one over there too. one over there too. In a nutshell, unpaid reproductive labor in the home is the secret to capitalism's productivity and profit, yes. Thank you, Gen Z. Over there. You know what I'm talking about. You're awake. The power differential between men and women in capitalist society cannot be attributed to the irrelevance of housework for capitalist accumulation. No. Rather, it should be interpreted as the effect of a social system that does not recognize the production and reproduction of the worker. Instead, what capitalism does is it mystifies reproductive labor

as a natural resource, as women's biological destiny, as love, as a personal service, all the while profiting from the wagedless condition, of the labor involved. That's you. And you, and you, and you, and you, and you. That brings me to my fourth punch point. Mum rage is a cumulative.

Can you tell me about becoming a mom, like the massive identity shift of going from woman in the world, to becoming a mother. And also, I mean, I don't know how soon that was to also getting married. But that whole shift, I'm wondering how that was. It's like I'm a twin. And the twin watches me interacting in the world

and goes, well, this is weird. Now that you have a husband and a wedding ring, people treat you differently. You're now Mrs. Edward Miles, which is odd. where's Michelle Hall on the letters and invitations identity-wise it was like a container that society puts around you

and it happens in very invisible ways just small things here and there and I think with the mother as well aside from the label the feeling was very joyous and wonderful and warm and loving and that's the relationship I have with my child that the action of being a mother, the domestic load, and the emotional, mental and social load,

that's invisible. That was challenging to accept that that's now who I am, Michelle, the mother, as seen by people around me, and that I should always have primary interest in my child. I should now want to spend time with my in-laws and do the dishes. I go out walking after midnight, out in the moonlight, just like we used to do, I'm always walking after midnight, searching for you. somewhere else. You learn to think of what you are in terms of what they want, and addressing their want becomes so ingrained in you that you lose sight of what you want. You

are always somewhere else. You turn into lakes, trees and birds, muses, whores, mothers, the vessel for others, the screen for their projection, And in all that, it can be hard to turn into yourself for yourself. I go out walking after midnight. You had a mild stammer. I talked about three different loads of being a mother emotional and did you know at that point during that hour if your son was briefed? You talked about three different loads of being a mother emotional emotion.

loads of being a mother, emotional, social and mental. I want to hear a little bit about the three loads for you. What does the social load consist of? Are you rich enough? Are you educated enough? Hide your post-natal anxiety so that you appear normal. Look like you've got it sorted. Have your teeth brushed, your hair washed and good clothes. on. Hold your own in a conversation so your child and you appear pro-social, like the Kindy teacher said. Pro-social, that means you're socially pro or able. On buses, at hospitals, doctors, playgroup, very emotionally calm and available for your child. So you were diagnosed with post-natal anxiety?

5, mum rage is trauma-related. You had a mild stammer as a result of the birth trauma. Are you able to tell me a little bit about the birth? And did you know at that point during that hour if your son was breathing? Are the partners not allowed to stay with you in the hospital? I have two questions. One question is about like recovering from a third degree tear if the recovery, if it was hard and long.

I'm wondering about getting UK maternal care. Like, the hospital was awful, but what about afterwards, like, were you able to get any sort of maternity leave or any sort of maternal health or no? Because you weren't a citizen. And how did that come out? Like, how does your rage, your rage, or your bigger feelings? Like, how do they show themselves?

I really, really needed help to sit up and breastfeed in the night. I really, really needed help just getting the pillows so I could sit. I was determined to heal, but I was scared to say I wasn't doing okay. I was worried they would monitor me. I just wanted like a very excellent reporting on everything so that I could be released. The people around, they're not awake, they're not aware, they're not listening. I'm trying to tell you that I'm here, I'm in pain, and I need to feed the baby. Can you just wake up and help me put the pillows behind me so I can sit up?

We need a system so I can do this. Minna writes that very often there is big tea trauma and little tea trauma lurking in the mum rage basement. Big tea trauma is an acute, possibly violent incident such as assault, violation or medical neglect during childbirth. Little T trauma is damaging psychological exposure that is not life-threatening, but leaves a mark. Usually, it's something repetitive you can't escape, often within your family of origin. The repetitive exposure to being oppressed, feeling unsafe every day, experiencing daily microaggressions as a person of colour or a woman can have traumatic impact.

While little T trauma is not the same as big T trauma, they both cause psychological harm and can lead to mum rage. Yeah, well, it's hard because we're talking about something that's invisible. You know, it's like when you're raging, you're fighting back, but what are you fighting back against? You know, and it's like a thousand small things that are hard to fight back against because they're invisible and everyone denies them. there's a lot of these invisible there's a lot of ghosts that's what i felt since becoming a mother

there's a lot of ghosts that stretch right back to i don't know when the mother religions were crushed by patriarchy when the witches were burned i can see the ghosts of that i can see the echoes of that inbuilt misogyny i have to perform this version of wellness of goodness put the wig back on put the costume back on. Otherwise I'm in danger. Otherwise I'm dangerous. I think rage is building because if you have to suppress and repress, it's gonna come out somehow.

Thank you. Thank you so much for listening. For more from Matressens Festival, you can head to Instagram at Matresson's Festival or you can head to Matresson's Festival.com for the Australian version or Matresens Festival.co.org for the UK version. You can also find more from me at ClareTonte on Instagram or Claretonte.com. And for more from Lizzie Humber, that's like number that said Humber, you can visit lizziehumber.com or go to Instagram at Lizzie Humber.

And we will speak to you next time.