Family life explored in play
Playwright Tina Howe explores societal family issues in "Birth and Afterbirth," the next Mainstage Theatre Series production in Wilner Auditorium.
Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, March 1-3, and 2 p.m. Sunday, March 4.
Questions Howe looks at in this absurd, surreal comedy/tragedy include "Why are our kids so spoiled?" "Why aren’t they grateful for everything we do for them?" and "How come nobody asks my husband to give up his career and stay home with the kids?"
Howe says she wrote "Birth and Afterbirth" out of her own experience and from the experiences of women she knew around the country.
"As a mother, you experience moments of excruciating tenderness and love, but there is also great savagery," she says. "Family life has been over-romanticized. The savagery has not been seen enough in the theater and in movies."
Howe wrote her first play while a senior at Sarah Lawrence College. Her friend, actress Jane Alexander, produced it. Howe taught English in high school in Maine, then in Wisconsin, agreeing to run the dramatics department on the condition she could produce her own plays. She says that’s how she learned what worked and what didn’t.
"If you can keep the attention of an audience of teen-agers, then it’s working," she says.
"Birth and Afterbirth" centers on the Apple family – Bill an insurance salesman, Sandy, a stay-at-home mom and their 4- year-old son, Nicky during Nicky’s birthday party. The party includes guests Mia and Jeffrey, the Apples’ childless anthropologist friends, both renowned for their international studies of childhood behavior. Of course, they are experts at child rearing.
April Folmer plays Sandy, Ian Garner plays Bill, and 20 year-old Matt Bustamante plays Nicky. Khalid Alshaer plays Jeffrey and Sarah Sinsheimer plays Mia.
Judith Babnich, associate professor of theater, directs the play.
Call 978-3233 for reserved tickets. Prices are $9 with discounts available.
