Mu-mma

Two women. One kitchen. No room left to pretend.

Mu-mma is a dark comedy about Evelyn and her daughter, Constance. Two women trapped in the heat of an Australian Christmas, doing their best to hold the day — and each other — together.

Constance, a queer woman about to become a mother (though not the one carrying the child), is desperate for her mother’s acceptance. Evelyn, fiercely traditional and quietly unwell, can’t find the words to bridge the gap between pride and prejudice, support and fear.

The day begins with good intentions: Evelyn fusses over foliage and decorative tea towels; Constance plays the dutiful sous chef. But as lunch unravels – relatives cancelling, food burning, tempers simmering – polite silences and passive-aggressive digs ignite into a full-blown reckoning. These two spiky, not-so-different souls spar with a ferocity that’s as funny as it is painful.

At the centre of their conflict is a question neither can quite voice: is Evelyn truly excited to become a grandmother, or does she quietly doubt Constance’s legitimacy as a mother because she isn’t the one giving birth? And why hasn’t she told anyone?

Told with the irreverence of Fleabag and the emotional voltage of August: Osage County, Mu-mma asks whether we can ever escape the patterns and pull of the past – and what it takes to heal our relationships with the people we should love most.

Mu-mma is DOOR 3’s inaugural creative development slot, providing funding, dedicated space, and production and marketing support to a new work by an emerging Queensland playwright. The Creative Development is an opportunity to explore new writing with performers, interrogate lighting and sound design, and present a showing of the work-in-progress to an audience of industry professionals.