Motherhood

Oddsocks Productions bring Motherhood to Chapel Street Arts Centre on Saturday 14 November, with the show starting at 7.30pm. It's an autobiographical play written by actress and writer Elli Mackenzie, who's also the creative producer of Oddsocks. She wrote it across the autumn and winter of 2025, and it's built around her own experience of raising children while running a family business alongside her husband, Andy Barrow, the company's artistic director. Mackenzie worked on each draft with feedback from her husband and children — all of whom work in the arts — and that pushed her to write from her own life rather than from a distance.

On stage, it's Mackenzie with Andy Barrow joining her. The show carries the Oddsocks brand of humour, and the staging is a bit surreal: there's an orangutan and a giant woodlouse on stage throughout. It premiered at the Jersey Arts Centre in January, where it sparked a lot of post-show conversation with audience members talking about their own experiences of motherhood.

It runs for 75 minutes with no interval, and the bar stays open afterwards, with Mackenzie inviting the audience to share their own parenting stories. Critics have described it as 'breathtakingly vivid', 'bloody brilliant' and 'a sucker punch to the feels'.

Tickets are £19 standard, with student and under-25s tickets at £15. The show is at Chapel Street Arts Centre, 19 Chapel Street, Derby DE1 3GU, on Saturday 14 November at 7.30pm.