Secret Life of a Mother - by Hannah Moscovitch (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A playwright writes an exposé of modern motherhood full of her own darkly funny confessions and taboo-breaking truths. One of her real-life friends, an actress, performs the piece, and through it her own experiences of motherhood start to surface. These mothers are not the butts of jokes, the villains, or the perfect angels of a household.

This empowered and relatable play was written collaboratively between award-winning theatre artists Hannah Moscovitch, Maev Beaty, and Ann-Marie Kerr, with co-creator Marinda de Beer. Uplifting and full of love, Secret Life of a Mother is a generous and powerful act of truth-telling for anyone who has thought about, been, loved, known--or come from--a mother.

Review Quotes

"Breathtaking piece of theatre. I've never left a play with a feeling like this. Shaken, uplifted, troubled, grateful." --Stephanie Morgenstern

"One of the most creative, radically honest, thrillingly acted and incredibly well told stories I have ever seen on stage, anywhere." --Tracey Erin Smith

"That piece of theatre grew me. Powerful, essential, moving, vulnerable, educational, real-ass shit." --Bahia Watson

"I am awestruck, rearranged, churned, changed." --Karen Robinson

About the Author

Hannah Moscovitch is one of Canada's most prominent playwrights. She has written sixteen plays, including East of Berlin, Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes, and This is War, and she has been honored with numerous awards, among them the Governor General's Literary Award, the Nova Scotia MasterWorks Arts Award, and the prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize. Hannah's music-theatre hybrid Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story (co-created with Christian Barry and Ben Caplan) became a TimeOut and New York Times Critic's Pick, winning both the Herald Angel and a Scotsman Fringe First awards at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and receiving six Drama Desk Award nominations in New York, crossing the 400-performance line in the process. In television, Hannah is co-creator, executive producer, and head writer of Little Bird alongside showrunner Jennifer Podemski, which has garnered a landslide of awards and critical praise, including the Séries Maria Prix Public (or Audience Award) and thirteen Canadian Screen Awards, including Best Drama Series. Most recently, Hannah was co-executive producer on seasons 1 and 2 of AMC's hit series Interview With The Vampire.

Maev Beaty is a critically acclaimed actor, writer, and voiceover artist, originating roles in twenty-three Canadian premieres (Hannah Moscovitch's Bunny, Kate Hennig's The Last Wife, Judith Thompson's Palace of the End, Sharon Pollock's Angel's Trumpet); co-writing and starring in award-winning theatre (Secret Life of a Mother, Montparnasse, Dance of the Red Skirts); interpreting lead classic roles across the country and over six seasons at the Stratford Festival (King Lear, She Stoops to Conquer, Midsummer Night's Dream); and acting in epic theatre endeavours (Soulpepper's August: Osage County, Sheep No Wool/Outside the March/Convergence's Passion Play, Nightwood's Penelopiad, Volcano's Another Africa, TheatreFront's The Mill). She is a Toronto Theatre Critics' Award winner, and has won multiple Dora Mavor Moore Awards and a thirteen-time nominee. She lives in Toronto.

Ann-Marie Kerr is an award-winning theatre director, actor, and teacher based in Halifax. Select directing credits include Concord Floral (Fountain School of Performing Arts, Halifax), Secret Life of a Mother (Theatre Centre and Crow's Theatre, Toronto), One Discordant Violin (2b theatre company, Halifax; 59E59 Theatre, New York), Bed and Breakfast (Soulpepper Theatre Company, Toronto), A Christmas Carol (Theatre New Brunswick, Fredericton), Daughter (Summerworks, Toronto; Battersea Arts Centre, London), Snake in the Grass (Neptune Theatre, Halifax), I, Claudia (Globe Theatre, Regina; Neptune Theatre, Halifax), Stranger to Hard Work (Cathy Jones Eastern Front Theatre, national tour), The Circle (Alberta Theatre Projects, Calgary), The Debacle (Zuppa Theatre Company, Halifax), and Invisible Atom (2b theatre company, Halifax; international tour). She is a graduate of L'École internationale de théâtre Jacques Lecoq and York University and is the former artistic associate of the Magnetic North Theatre Festival.