The Performance Doula

"If our projects are our babies, which feminist, queer parenting strategies would we want to apply to their upbringing? Under what conditions would we want to give birth? And who will hold our hand while we do it?"
Choreographer, performer and writer Claire Lefèvre reflects on creative processes as birthing metaphors. She introduces the figure of the “performance doula”, a protagonist who would support people emotionally and physically before, during and after the gestational work of art making. Lefèvre advocates for a new role in the cultural scene that prioritizes care, solidarity and collective creation. It's an inspiration for all those who not only want to make art, but also live (and survive) it.

Claire Lefèvre
Choreographer, Performer, Writer

 

1. My work is my baby

Back in 2020, when I told my friends that I would be working on a new production in Hamburg during a nine-month residency, several of them jokingly exclaimed: “9 months! You could have a baby by the time you get back!” And although I did not get pregnant at that time, the whole creative process did feel like a birth. Not of a person, but of a performance that I had planned, desired, nurtured and pushed out into the world with unpredicted amounts of blood (more on that later) sweat and tears.

It’s quite common for artists to use parental metaphors to describe their work: “This project is my baby”, “I can’t wait to get this work out into the world”, “After a premiere, I always feel this post-show depression”. A perhaps less common yet seemingly substantial piece of evidence to prove my point: before a premiere, I constantly dream of being “with child”. (Either pregnant or already parenting a newborn, toddler or older offspring whom I magically recognize as mine in the overnight realm.) But besides my subconscious children, parallels between biological and intellectual gestation have been around since Aristotle and further developed in the Middle Ages when “the brain was understood to be a kind of womb of thought” (Rose, 1996, 621). The analogy reached a peak in the early nineteenth century, when romantic authors were thought to infuse their texts with their unique personalities, making them akin to their manuscripts and thus positioning themselves in their lineage. Several writers, from James Joyce to Miguel de Cervantes, referred to their work as artistic offspring, using vivid birthing metaphors to shape modern ideas of intellectual creativity. Long story short, others have thought of this before. As it usually goes.

But historically, this perspective on parenting artworks was primarily used by male authors and pursued in terms of ownership, claiming authority over the artwork produced rather than nurturing its growth. This patriarchal approach is reflected in the English language with idioms such as ‘right of paternity’ (!) which refers to the legal right to be recognized as the creator of original artistic works. As I already have enough daddy issues of my own, I’m rather curious to move away from this patronizing and hetero-normative production model and shift towards formats that would open the potential for care and co-creation. Out with the male genius model and in with “it takes a village to raise a child”. What about mothers, co-parents, donors, surrogates, aunties? If our projects are, indeed, our babies, which feminist, queer parenting strategies would we want to apply to their upbringing? Under what conditions would we want to give birth? And who will hold our hand while we do it?

 

2. The performance doula

As I continued exploring the potential of this gestational metaphor, the work of doulas quickly emerged. A doula (the ancient Greek word for female servant) is a trained companion who is not a health professional, but who supports another person through childbirth. Doulas provide guidance, emotional support and advocacy for their clients in relationships with medical institutions such as hospitals. Their work includes support before, during and after childbirth. The term doula has now evolved beyond childbirth to include specialized caregivers who support people through a wide range of transformative experiences such as dying, divorce or gender transition. It is a practice of companionate holding, especially across difficult thresholds in life (cf. Lewis, 2023, 77). In the speculative frame of birthing artworks, I wonder what the role of a performance doula might be and how this protagonist would shape-shift creative processes.

In my workshop “care work for exhausted freelancers and overwhelmed artists” I sometimes ask participants “what would a caring process feel like in your body” or “How would you like to feel during premiere week?” (This practice is inspired by Adrienne Maree Brown who asks “How would liberation feel in your body?”). Responses are often strikingly basic: 

I would be fed with nutritious and tasty food

I would sleep well and enough

I would have time to warm-up and cool-down

I could still make it to my therapy appointment

I could leave the black box every couple of hours to get sunlight on my face

In my experience as a choreographer, tech-week often feels more like being run over by a truck than participating in an inspiring retreat where you tend to your artistic practice with love. When I birthed the Hamburg piece for instance, I mostly survived on grilled cheese sandwiches and I spent a whole day working on light cues with 40 degrees fever and a raging bladder infection, wishing I could halve myself so that one part of me could go get antibiotics and the other could continue to set up so that ideally all pieces of myself would make it to the show in one piece. 

A performance doula could support some of this: from holding you while you cry, to making sure you’ve eaten before the show, what would it mean to actually be cared for? But beyond reproductive or emotional labor, how would it affect choreographers, on an artistic level, to know that someone knows their work intimately enough to perhaps even “babysit” for some time (while they rest, do press interviews, or run to the doctor to get those pills?). What would it be like to know that someone else in your team is familiar with your access rider and can be an advocate for you in the cultural institutions you visit? What would it change to come home and not have to fall apart in the arms of your partners, roommates or close friends but have the capacity to make a warm dinner for yourself and wash your own socks?

Currently, publicly funded artists can usually afford to pay for support in the form of dramaturgs or production teams, but neither of these positions officially integrate care work. Moreover, as cultural budgets are currently threatened by the rise of right-wing austerity, care-scarcity risks becoming the norm. Inventing the role and practices of a performance doula is an increasingly urgent inquiry aimed at revaluing, both economically and structurally, the extra work that cultural workers (particularly femme, disabled and BIPOC) do outside of their working hours. It is a radical proposal to integrate care work as an indispensable part of how we create, and to infuse every layer of our working processes with deliberate strategies of support. Not viewing care as a luxury, an afterthought or as a pastel bandage on an open wound, but as an actual artistic methodology and survival tactic. 

 

3. Full-spectrum care

I am particularly inspired by the work of full spectrum doulas, who support people through every phase of the birth processes (pre- and post-partum), as well as all other reproductive experiences including menstruation, adoption, stillbirth, miscarriage, or abortion. Artists also need help at various stages of their processes: from planning to producing to recovering, as well as when things don’t follow a linear script. Or when the shit hits the fan entirely. What would it mean to still be supported when a project doesn’t receive funding? Or when conflict arises within the team? And ultimately, is there a realm in which the success of a project could be measured by the pleasure experienced by the artists throughout the process rather than the number of tickets sold or the amount of tour dates booked?

What I find compelling about full-spectrum doula work is the politically engaged practice of advocacy. Being aware of the mechanisms through which the intersectional power structures of race, class or gender affect the birthing experience of their clients is part of the doula job, thus affirming care work as not only necessary, but also revolutionary: “their role is that of an activist, advocate, ally, and radical caregiver.” (Apfel, 2016, 104). What doulas offer is an acknowledgement of the need for more specialized care workers, interdependent support structures, and a deep reimagining of what birth can look and feel like, which is a first step towards deconstructing capitalist models of reproduction. (cf. Apfel, 2016, 8). As cultural workers, we also need specialized care workers and a profound re-imagining of our working structures. We need advocates, with a plurality of expertise and lived experience in order to help artists navigate their way through potentially hostile environments that often reproduce systemic inequalities. Someone to hold our hand, wipe our tears and fight our battles when necessary.

Because things do go wrong. A lot. Since 2019, two of my shows have been postponed due to Covid-19, and another one because of a combination of burnouts in the team as well as a literal fire in the theatre. I’m so grateful that I tackled most of these challenges together with my producer Sophie Schmeiser, who often doubles as a caretaker (meaning she doesn’t merely solve logistics issues, but also tends to the emotional aftermath of such disruptions). However, in those instances when she wasn’t around, dealing with unforeseen chaos was much more difficult. Having a trusted person to turn to and process hurdles with is transformative. From messy communication to structural discrimination, the potential for mistreatment in a precarious field is high. Going through it without support is not only discouraging and damaging, but downright unnecessary. 

 

4. Towards a sustainable future

In the last three years, I have attempted to work as a performance doula in different creative settings. Some processes were smooth and utopian, others rocky. All full of learning curves and conviction that we were never meant to do this alone. One thing I have learned is that care work never disappears, it just gets redistributed: oftentimes, a smoother process for someone means more hours of unpaid or unseen work for another person down the line, and any attempt to soften rigid working structures can often feel like banging your head against the wall. And even if cracks do appear over time, in the end, it often just boils down to wealth redistribution and universal basic income. In the meantime, however, we can reject a problematic system while also needing to navigate and sabotage it from the inside. Asking for paid care work doesn’t mean complying with neoliberal value-systems based on constant monetization; the goal is not to submit to exploitative labor structures, where every act of service is assigned a numerical value, but rather to think beyond those structures altogether. Plus, care is hard to quantify; there’s something absurd about keeping track of hours while someone is having a break-down mid-rehearsal or when most of your labor happens in the liminal space between backstage and someone’s bed. 

Beyond economical valorization, we need to work toward a greater appreciation of care work at an artistic level. Because as long as this work is only perceived as a luxury, and not as a central part of how we organize artistic labor, hierarchies will remain. If we stick to a singular authorship model, praising only choreographers and directors without shining a light on all the other protagonists working on and behind the scenes as equally valuable, we will continue to reproduce similar pyramidal structures. Another thing I have learnt is that always being the caretaker is not sustainable. As much as I love to provide comfort to a drained choreographer or formulate a wake-up email to lethargic institutions, being a stress-sponge does take its toll. My wish for the future of this research is not to gate-keep this position, but to share skills. Care is complex work, but you can learn it and you can teach it. If more of us were willing to step into this role, it could become standard practice to alternate between being a doula and having a doula. We could take turns so that we also don’t fall into the parallel hamster wheel of forever producing new pieces: sometimes I hold your hand, sometimes you hold mine. Sometimes I shine on stage, sometimes I bask in your glow, knowing that without each other, none of us would have made it. 

 

Quoted literature

Apfel, Alana. 2016. Birth Work as Care Work: Stories from Activist Birth Communities. Oakland: PM Press.

Lewis, Sophie. 2023. “Mothering against motherhood: doula work, xenohospitality and the idea of the momrade”. In: Feminist Theory, Vol. 24(1): p. 68–85.

Rose, Mark. 1996. “Mothers and Authors: Johnson v. Calvert and the New Children of Our Imaginations”. In: Critical Inquiry, Vol. 22, No. 4: p. 613–633.

 

Other influential sources

Brown, Adrienne Maree. 2019. Pleasure activism. Chico: AK Press.

Brown, Adrienne Maree. 2017. Emergent Strategy. Chico: AK Press.

Dixon, Ejeris and Piepzna-Samarasihna, Leah Lakshmi. 2020. Beyond survival, strategies and stories from the transformative justice movement. Chico: AK PRESS.

Ehrenreich, Barbara and English, Deirdre. 2010. Witches, Midwives and Nurses. A History of Women Healers. New York: The Feminist Press.

Ehrenreich. Barbara and Russell Hochschild, Arlie. 2002. Introduction, Global Women: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy, edited by Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild. New York: Henry Holt.

Federici, Silvia. 1975. Wages Against Housework. New York: Power of Women Collective and Falling Wall Press.

Gumbs, Alexis Pauline. 2010. We Can Learn to Mother Ourselves: The Queer Survival of Black Feminism 1968–1996. PhD dissertation, Duke University.

Hedva, Johanna. 2024. How to tell when we will die. New York: Hillman Grad Books. 

Kunst, Bojana. 2015. Artist at work – Proximity of Art and Capitalism. Hants: Zero Books.

Lewis, Sophie. 2019. Full Surrogacy Now – Feminism Against Family. London: Verso.

Lewis, Sophie. 2020. Abolish the family. London: Verso.

Mahoney, Mary and Mitchell, Lauren. 2016. The doulas – radical care for pregnant people. New York: Feminist press. 

Nelson, Maggie. 2020. On Freedom: four songs of care and constraint. London: Ma Bibliothèque.

Sharman, Zena. 2021. The care we dream of: Liberatory and transformative approaches to LGBTQ+ health. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press. 

The Care Collective. 2020. The Care manifesto: The Politics of Interdependence. London: Verso.