No Mother, No Future: Performing Motherhood and Reproductive Loss

No Mother, No Future investigates how theatre and performance use pregnancy loss to represent a lost future. Spanning the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, this book analyzes performances that challenge dominant cultural scripts linking motherhood with futurity and nationhood in Canada and the United States. Combining intersectional feminism with theories of reproductive justice and reproductive futurity, this work interrogates how pregnancy loss—especially when experienced by those excluded from white, heteronormative ideals of motherhood—is often portrayed as a societal failure. It examines reproductive loss not only as a dramatic device but also as a political reality shaped by systemic violence, including slavery, forced sterilization, and child welfare policies that disproportionately target Indigenous and Black communities. Through in-depth analyses and original interviews with playwrights, directors, and actors, this volume offers a critical framework for understanding how performance stages reproductive loss as a site of resistance. As the first book-length study of motherhood and reproduction in Canadian theatre, it is essential reading for scholars and students in theatre, performance studies, feminist theory, cultural studies, and reproductive justice.