The title of Johanna Nutter’s one-woman play ‘My Pregnant Brother’ certainly evokes a myriad of questions and emotional responses.
You’d think it was about her pregnant brother, and how he underwent physical, emotional and mental transformations, right?
Wrong.
Surprisingly, the play is anchored upon the real-life transformation that Johanna experienced–and is still experiencing to this day.
She states; “You’ll notice it is called My Pregnant Brother and not The Pregnant Man…because it is about how I changed my identity as a sister, aunt, daughter, actor and it is not about trans-gender issues.”
“My brother became pregnant after undergoing a gender transformation, and he really needed me to help him start a family. What I had to do next would change the course of all our lives forever. I said no. I declined…I rejected his plea for me to move in and raise his daughter with him.”
That decision was pivotal in so many ways…because it gave birth to My Pregnant Brother.
Johanna needed to quit her lucrative paying job, move-in with a friend, and literally start from scratch in order to throw herself into acting. From there, she would use up her savings, time and energy in launching a full-time career in acting and not parenting.
She states; “I had been living my life in mothballs, shrouded in responsibility…the one who had it all together, the ‘rock’ of the family. A rock can’t go out and be an actor…a rock has to have a wad of cash in case somebody needs something.”
“But I knew my own time had come to shed the cocoon and do what I was destined to do. This meant my brother was losing his security in a time when he needed it the most. I took a page from his book of courage, but you know what’s so heartbreaking about it all? We both had to be true to ourselves and that meant that a baby might be lost to us forever because of my decision.”
Today, Johanna enjoys a loving relationship with her niece and her play is about to take off into the stratosphere. She has been invited to the grandaddy of all Fringe Festivals in Edinburgh, to play 27 shows in 28 days at the Pleasance Theatre on the main stage.
We all face difficult decisions in this journey called life, but if you make them for the right reasons, phenomenal things might just happen.
Excerpt from http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/my-pregnant-brother-uk;
My Pregnant Brother is Freestanding’s flagship production and Johanna’s first play. After winning the best of the Montreal Fringe Festival in 2009 and a subsequent MECCA for best text, the show began touring Canada. Perfectly bilingual, Nutter translated her play into French and presented both versions at La Licorne Theatre in 2010 (a first for the francophone theatre), winning a COCHON D’OR award for best Independent Production in Quebec and following up with a performance at the ProPulse Festival in Belgium; the only Canadian show to be invited.
Now, the show has been invited to the Pleasance theatre for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, followed by a week at the SOHO Theatre in London. This is wonderful news and it comes at a price. Both theatres operate on box office splits of 60/40, so there are no guarantees and no financial support prior to showtime. At the same time, an outlay of about $15 000 CND is required to properly fund this tour. Accommodations and travel are expensive, plus we have hired an award-winning communications company to ensure that we don’t get lost in the sea of shows at the world’s biggest theatre festival. We have applied to the Canada Council for the Arts in the hopes of obtaining some assistance, and we are here; asking for your help as well.
Along with the personalized eco-friendly perks that Johanna has promised, a donation to our project will also mean that a young and energetic company will have the resources to make Montreal, Quebec, and Canada proud. Time and time again, my pregnant brother has won over the communities it plays for, creating relationships that we will carry with us into the future.
If you have not yet had the privilege of catching this incredible one-woman show, it’s playing for one-night only at this year’s Fringe Festival, all profits going to the Edinburgh Fringe project.
Montreal Fringe 2013/My Pregnant Brother Ticket Info; http://montrealfringe.ca/en/show/mon-fr%C3%A8re-est-enceinte-my-pregnant-brother
Funding Info; http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/my-pregnant-brother-uk
Pleasance Theatre/Edinburgh Info; http://www.pleasance.co.uk/edinburgh/events/my-pregnant-brother
Freestanding Productions Info; http://www.freestandingroom.com/
