Niplash

Niplash is painful, absurd, heartbreaking, heartwarming, and full of love, a lot like feeding. It’s a highly physical and visual lactivist call to arms. Expect to see milk.

Part memoir, part cultural commentary, Niplash explores the mixed messages, societal pressures, and emotional contradictions around infant feeding. It gives voice to mothers whose stories are rarely told, from those shamed for feeding in public to those struggling in private.

At its heart is a collection of real feeding paraphernalia and personal stories donated by mothers across the UK, a living archive of care, chaos, and resistance.

Niplash is for the mum who was spat at for feeding her baby in the street, the mum told to put her tits away in a café, the mum scorned for feeding a baby with different skin colour to her own, the plus size mum so ashamed and embarrassed she only fed her baby with the curtains closed at home. Niplash is for all the mums. Whatever their choices or non choices.

With guest appearance from Bristol’s own BYOB (Bring Your Own Baby) Choir.

About the Artist:

Karla Shacklock is a Bristol-based performer, choreographer,
movement director, lecturer, writer and mentor. Her work is driven by truth, connection, and collective action. Over the past two decades she has created and toured original productions across Europe, and performed with companies including Complicité, National Theatre Wales, Mimbre, and Fleur Darkin. As a Movement Director, her work has appeared at The Barbican, Southbank Centre, and the National Theatre.

Her doctoral research explored authenticity, presence and transformation in performance, and has been widely published. Niplash brings together that inquiry with her lived experience of motherhood