New UK Mum Comedy | “The Littlest Boho”

Guest post from across the pond…

Sometime around the time my belly started sticking out with my first child, my name started to change to “Mummy.”  At first, it was just the health professionals checking on the pregnancy.  And then, once the baby was born, I became “Mumm”y to more people – the health visitors, doctors, people in the street, even my own mother called me Mummy:  ‘Would mummy like a cup of tea?’ or ‘And how’s Mummy?’

Being a grown up with opinions of my own, I thought that nothing would change once I started a family.  I would feel the same about my work.  I would feel the same about my partner.  And I would certainly keep up with all my friends.  I’d have a lovely little accessory to dress up and show off.  Sure, we’d bond and everything, but if there was a night out planned with the girls, there would be no problem leaving the little one behind.  I’d feel fine about that, and of course there’d be no shortage of friends and relations happy to babysit.

Obviously, I was misguided on several fronts.  My partner went from being a fairly supportive ally to someone I would compete with on a crazy tally of who had done the most grueling stuff/had the least sleep/deserved some time out.  My friends, though lovely, didn’t seem to be jumping up and down waiting for an opportunity to babysit. And I was a bit too tired to go out anyway.  Oh yeah, and I seemed to have fallen in love with my child.

And with love comes another kind of crazy.  The craziness of parents who would do anything for their child even if it means pushing all the other kids out of the way.  The crazy that I started to write about with my writing partner Cara.  And so we made The Littlest Boho.  A comedy which is about women who are mums and women who aren’t.  How they stay friends, and how they are on completely different planets from each other, seemingly spiraling away over a distance of one night stands and school applications.

Writer/performers Sophie Trott and Cara Jennings have been working together since 2012.  In that time they’ve created a range of digital comedy shorts, performed sketch and character comedy live in London, and in plays. They’re currently working on new narrative comedy TV projects for the BBC and Citrus.

Sophie is a mum of one, with another one on the way. She started her career as an actor, and trained at the physical comedy improvisation school, École Philippe Gaulier. She has worked extensively in TV, film and theatre in the UK. She’s currently filming alongside Judi Dench in Victoria and Abdul, directed by Stephen Frears.

Cara started performing, writing and directing comedy as part of the three-woman sketch group The Secret Gardeners, who performed extensively on the London Fringe and at Edinburgh. Her show, ‘Millie and Tillie Do You!’ was a finalist of the Funny Women awards. She’s worked on many short films and has been performing her first stand-up gigs. She also has been writing plays. Most recently Stray, which she performed with Sophie earlier in the year.