A COMPOSER and mother is using sharp humour and soul-shaking truths to explore the ‘dark arts of parenting’ in an eclectic new show.

Tanya Holt is bringing Cautionary Tales for Daughters – Songs your mother never taught you to Bridport Arts Centre on Saturday, October 22. The show is a foray by song into the ‘dark heart of growing-up and the dark arts of parenting’.

Combining ‘gut-punchingly beautiful’ lyricism with humour, truths are teased out of subjects familiar to us all: the disorientation of growing up and the search for identity and acceptance.

The show draws on Tanya’s unconventional upbringing, her own experiences as a parent and real-life stories submitted by the public to cast a playful and sometimes painfully honest light on the challenges, travails and triumphs of parenthood.

As part of the performance the audience get to contribute their own words of caution and advice, which will be shared with the wider public on the show’s website.

Witness tales of growing up with the hapless, feckless and foolish: Cherry the Amazing YoYo Girl, an obsessive dieter caught between gluttony and vanity and Chanel The Labelled Girl, whose criminal obsession with designer clothes leads to her grisly demise; and fickle Princess Sylvia who only realises she could have had anything and anyone when it’s too late.

Tanya Hold draws together a heart-rending compilation of true and sometimes disturbing real-life stories drawn from group discussions she undertook with men and women in Lambeth in London where she lives.

Animated backdrops illuminate the pages of a storybook as the tales unfold.

Tanya said: “I wanted to turn an unflinching eye on the mistakes I’ve made, both as a young woman and as a mother trying to find the best way to bring up my daughter in the 21st century.”

“Should I own up to my mistakes? Would knowing them help Dotty get on in life? What is the right advice and when and how should I deliver it?”

n Cautionary Tales for Daughters – Songs your mother never taught you, at Bridport Arts Centre on Saturday, October 22 at 7.30pm. Tickets cost £12.