I vividly remember my son Jonas as a 1-year old crying every time I packed my rehearsal bag.  On the day pictured here, he adamantly refused to go to 3 year-old preschool.  After I was gone for weeks and weeks in the evenings and night, he refused to be dropped off in the morning, so on this day he came along to help the SM and me tape out the set before a blocking rehearsal.  

I know all working moms walk a tough tightrope, but theatre Moms get a special kind of salt in the wound when leaving kids at nighttime for jobs that barely pay to work with colleagues who are often unsympathetic or patronizing toward mothers who are now seen as “povienical” or “suburban” because their life choices. 

The closets, church basements, back offices and bathrooms I’ve pumped in while wondering what’s in all for…

From the NYTimes article “Shutting the Door on the Hard-Knock LifeThe requirements of the theater, and the constant physical and emotional risks facing performers, have many demanding their basic needs as humans.”

“Among that group, traditionally, have been parents of young children. Even if you have a stay-at-home partner or the means to hire full-time care, the mismatched hours of a baby’s schedule and an actor’s can be unbearable. Gray, the “Hadestown” star, was horrified to find that her older son, now 6, at some point started to cry whenever she sang, having learned to associate the sound with her going away.”

Ironically I saw Amber Gray in “Hadestown” and then randomly met her at the airport afterwards. She was phenomenal as a performer and person.