Womb Party – The Place, London

Writer and Director: Andrea Heaton

Choreographers: Amarnah Ufuomo Cleopatra and Stefania Pinato

For two nights only, The Place is offering audiences the chance to re-enter the womb and to discover all of its secrets in a 60-minute performance with light interaction, games and plenty of uterine facts. Written by Andrea Heaton, Womb Party is part dance performance, part social and biological awareness project that adopts theatre-in-education approaches that might be better suited to a school-based audience, where young women in particular can be encouraged to understand the cycles of their body and the choices they have about what happens to it.

Choreographed and performed by Amarnah Ufuomo Cleopatra and Stefania Pinato, they prove welcoming hosts, the “consciousness of the womb,” as viewers arrive through the draped birth canal from the bar area into the warm and inviting womb represented by a vulva shaped sculpture designed by Emma Williams that certainly sets the scene. The scrunched fabric of Williams’ creation is replicated in suspended lights that may be eggs or follicles spaced around the womb, in which Barnaby Booth controls the lighting design that shapes the very different purposes of Womb Party.

The show itself mixes different approaches, starting with some basic facts about the construction and connections within the female reproductive system, along with the physical and emotional changes that occur across monthly cycles and years of fertile operation. The functional role as a source of procreation and, separately, physical pleasure, is explored through dance, a sequence that borrows liberally from hip hop, cha-cha-cha, break dance and contemporary styles that emphasise the sensuousness of the subject matter as well as its female empowerment narrative in which the womb becomes its symbol.

The second part of the show includes a number of interactive games, including the always dangerous Never Have I Ever, for which a free non-alcoholic cocktail is provided on the way in and a new quiz called ‘Pelvic Pursuits’ which gives the audience a choice of two answers and a sound to indicate their selection. Everyone plays along but with questions ranging from who has been on a solo holiday to how many periods does a woman have in a lifetime, taking in faked orgasms, the pill and alternative names for the womb, this segment is hard to deliver with a large audience in raked seating and might be better suited to smaller groups of students discovering all the ways their uterus may be utilised for the first time.

The most powerful piece becomes the show’s main purpose, incorporating real vocal testimony from women who have experienced pregnancy and abortion discussing both the reality of the procedure and the ways that they felt judged or shamed by others, including the intrusive patriarchal voice provided by Luke Dickson that tells the women that he knows what is best for them. There is real authenticity here that could form a much more substantial part of the show from the beginning, helping to underscore the impact of abortion and the return to physical activity that is the underlying purpose of Womb Party.

As the creative team continue to seek funding for future performances, the current pitch of this piece and the additional resources they have developed for post-show care seem a better fit for a secondary school tour where the factual information about what the female body does and who gets to control it can arm the next generation of young women as they start to put these ideas of their body into practice.

Reviewed on 26 April 2025