On First Trimester and parenting

After participating in Auckland Pride show First Trimester, a little bit about my relationship to parenting and potentially being a parent.

It is the understatement of the decade, or any decade really, to say that people get heated about parenting. During my time at The Spinoff, some of the pieces I saw get the most heated discourse were parenting pieces. People have a lot of opinions on parenting! My personal opinion is that unless your parenting is likely to be written about in a Charles Dickens novel, a Toi solo, or a memoir, you’re probably doing just fine and nobody should comment on it, myself included.

On Thursday night, I had the privilege to participate in a show called First Trimester. It’s a durational show by London-based performance artist Krishna Istha as they search for the “perfect” sperm donor. The show, which can run from anywhere between three and eight hours (today’s show, the Saturday show, will be eight hours), involves Krishna interviewing participants live on stage, to find them and their partner a sperm donor and failing that, the qualities in a donor that will be ideal for them.

I went into this as a participant knowing that I would not be the perfect sperm donor. Firstly, the phrase “donate sperm” makes me laugh, which indicates that I would not be an ideal co-parent. Secondly, I don’t want to donate sperm. Thirdly, I don’t want to engage with any of the results that might occur after I donate sperm, most pertinently being a parent. 

Because this is a show at Basement Theatre, I expected a relatively chill set-up. Two chairs, an audience on one side, a general warm wash. What I got was like a proper TV interview (appropriate, because the interviews are being filmed live). I sat in front of a grinning, warm Krishna, about as far away from them as you are from the device you are reading this on, under the most flattering purple-and-orange lighting I could hope to be under. We got ready, and after a ten second count, the interview started.