EDINBURGH 2025: Lily Phillips Guest Blog

Lily Phillips guest blogs for BWW ahead of bringing Crying to the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

I wrote the show Crying because I had to. As soon as I went onstage again I just blurted out 'I've had a baby!' Even though I didn't have any jokes about it yet, I felt propelled to tell everyone because it was everything! It forced me to write material really quickly because I was desperate to tell/warn people about birth and get a sense of whether my experience was relatable to other women. Which unfortunately it was. 

I was constantly testing the boundaries, is this ok to say? Does this make people uncomfortable? I was trying to make sense of what happened by telling 'jokes' like 'birth isn't magical birth is just hours and hours of unimaginable pain, where every now and then someone comes along and fists you!' I'm trying to make you laugh but also I'm asking the audience 'is this kind of examination normal? Did you know this was going to happen? Were you shocked too?' 

I felt so lost after giving birth and I couldn't figure out what I was feeling and why I wasn't enjoying this magical time as much as I was expected to. I was so lucky to have a job where I could be in front of people and tell them what was going on, it helped me untangle it in my mind. Also it felt like The Stand Up space was non judgemental because people thought I was exaggerating for the purpose of the joke, I wasn't. 

I was also trying to find the line between, can I love my baby but also hate a lot about the experience of looking after her? I've come to realise two things can be true at once. And people can struggle with this kind of nuance. They want it to be all butterflies and flowers and don't want to hear about the fact that you are leaking out of every orifice and you're so sleep deprived you are sending people accidental nudes. Let me explain. People were asking for pics of the baby but those first few weeks you are just wandering around naked, breastfeeding constantly. So I would quickly shoot off photos to people. After not getting any responses I looked back at the photos and would see it was mostly tit, with a blurred out baby in the foreground. Damn you portrait mode! 

Also the mad tired state of mind I was in was quite liberating as a performer, I didn't care if people wanted to hear it or not, which in hindsight was good (for me) because I just plowed on regardless. If I had been more awake I might have been put off, instead I was like 'No! This stag do WILL hear about my episiotomy! 

We have overly romanticised birth and early motherhood. Some of it is super dark but there is humour to be found in that darkness and that's the place I want to get to. Like when the midwife has to come round and check your vaginal stitches, and she knows it looks really bad so she totally overdoes it with the compliments. 'This is the most beautiful thing I have EVER SEEN! It's a work of art! Can I take a photo?'

The first gig I did was actually a baby gig, which isn't a tiny gig, it's when you perform stand up to actual babies (and their mums OR DADS, but mainly mums lets be honest...). I took my baby and partner with me and she cried while I was onstage. Looking back I was pretty shit but I was just pleased I had put on trousers and left the house!

I don't want the show to scare women but I don't want to patronise them either. She's an adult who is about to go through a major event, something potentially dangerous and traumatic and whichever way you look at it, something incredibly hard on her mind and body. Let's give her all the information and all the possibilities. Rather than throw her into the fire and hope she survives.

I hope this isn't their story but if it is or parts of it resonate I want women to feel less alone in that experience. I clung to the raw honesty I got from some women in my life, things they said have stayed with me, because it initiated a shift in my thinking. One friend was like 'motherhood is actually really boring'.  That released me from feeling like I had to enjoy every moment!  Sure sometimes I'm being uncomfortably honest but every life experience has light and shade, and I'm offering the shade, because I don't think it's talked about and it is where the humour is! I've written the show I wish I had seen before I had a baby.