Your account of your play fit in with some musings I've been
having, occasioned by the warm welcome from the Hovey audience
of both my "Autumn Leaves" and (even warmer, I admit) Miriam's
"Noodle Kugle", which is about the "first date" of widowed grandparents
and explores their relationships with grown children and grandkids.
Also by a meeting with the talented dramturg-director and the
brilliant actress about possible revisions for my new piece
in the Blacksmith House Minifest. Both these wonderful women,
theatre pros in their forties and never parents, just don't
"get" the weight of the brute fact of motherhood for my character,
or the depth and complexity of the associated ambivalence.
It occurs to me that, specially at the development level, there
are far fewer parents in the theatre than in the general population.
Plays that focus on mother-child relationships that emerge from
this process tend to be from the POV of the child, often present
the older generation satirically or two-dimensionally, and are
harshly judgmental toward the parent's failings.
The largest single demographic segment of today's audiences,
OTOH, is women with grown children. (08/16/99)
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