Despite their two Dunedin Fringe Festival performances selling out last year, cabaret performers Charlotte McKay and Harriet Moir feel as if they are introducing themselves to the audience tonight.
The 230 people who attended their two sold-out festival performances of The Reinvention of Us last year were mostly ''music theatre people'', who knew McKay and Moir.
The people buying tickets to this year's three performances of comedy cabaret Mothers (in da) Hood were mostly strangers, McKay said.
The prospect of performing to strangers was ''exciting'', McKay said.
''It's an extra challenge for us. It's like we are introducing ourselves, selling ourselves to people who don't know what it is we do,'' she said.
The show's title, Mothers (in da) Hood, sounded more gangsta rap from the ghetto than a comedy cabaret from Dunedin.
But there were many similarities between the two genres.
Some the greatest gangsta rappers introduced themselves in the first song on their debut album, such as Who am I? (What's my name)? by Snoop Doggy Dogg.
Just like the greatest rap songs, this cabaret show talks about the realities of life.
''We came up with this idea of motherhood seen through this gritty reality of what it is like as a day-to-day experience to either live with a mum or be a mum,'' McKay said.
The show's theme was about ''finding a sense of self within motherhood and about working out how you retain an independence,'' she said.
Being a parent and maintaining an independence was challenging but important, she added.
Finding time for motherhood and creating a new show was a balancing act.
''This morning my [voice] warm up was to yell at my children to hurry up and get out the door which, as a performer, is not the way you would prepare,'' she said laughing.
Another similarity the show has with gangsta rap was the need for a ''parental advisory - explicit content'' warning sticker.
''It's always language with us,'' McKay said.
''We try and keep a lid on it but you know,'' Moir said, resigned to the fact.
To see
Mothers (in da) Hood, Cafe LOL, 8pm.
