By Ron Fassler . . .
Two-time Tony nominee Jessica Hecht, an actress who seems to always be working on the New York stage (that is when she isn’t shooting films or television shows), is taking on a new set of challenges with her latest endeavor. She is set to open April 7 at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in midtown Manhattan in A Mother, which not only marks its world premiere, but has Hecht as both its star and co-creator. Conceived in tandem with playwright Neena Beber, it is set against the backdrop of the 1979 Miami race riots. Interestingly, it is loosely adapted from Bertolt Brecht’s 1932 drama The Mother; itself based on Maxim Gorky’s 1906 novel. Before it begins previews March 29, I spoke with Hecht during a break from rehearsal on how the piece came to fruition. Edited for brevity, here’s what she has to say about her hopes of it connecting to audiences in our current political climate:
Ron Fassler: How did you come to conceive this new play with Neena Beber?
Jessica Hecht: I’ve known Neena since college and the way she wrote back then made me think that this is what writing should be. The kind of intimacy of that relationship and the way she’s been championing projects over time that deal with the way women come into their own—the way women find their agency—kept us talking. And over the years we discussed great plays that we’ve always loved and inspired us and thought about adapting. About six years ago, The Mother came up as a possibility and we slowly developed a way of working on it. Then a year into that, Covid came, and we really sunk our teeth into it. And it’s been this awesome period of adaptation and shapeshifting of the piece. Our friendship is the origin of it all.
RF: Do you recall when you first discovered Brecht’s The Mother?
JH: I knew about the play just tangentially. And then what happened was I was running this organization called The Campfire Project and I was in a refugee camp in Greece with it. People were fleeing the Syrian civil war with people flooding the camps there. There were many, many mothers we encountered that felt that total sense that their sons wouldn’t have a future. That they would be conscripted and sent to the army or that they were with them in the camps and extremely depressed. I said to Neena, “Let’s find a piece about mothers, particularly from another culture, about a preoccupation with her son.” And I stumbled upon The Mother at the Strand Bookstore, just walking around, and it hit me that the play was a perfect architecture for the piece that Nina and I could create.
RF: And now this piece first written by a Russian then later adapted by a German is in the hands of two American women. What have you done specifically to Americanize it?
JH: We’ve set it in Miami Beach during the 1979 race riots where a Black man named Arthur Lee McDuffie, a victim of police brutality, was beaten to death. His mother rose up as his defender and went on the news to plead that it all stop. It made a difference though sadly, many mothers have had to do the same thing since—becoming radicalized through a tragedy with their son. And Brecht felt like a perfect way into what we wanted to write. You can kind of like open a Brecht play and maybe wait a week and you see how much prescient knowledge he had about what will happen. Though we developed it largely during Biden’s presidency, now in this moment, we have kept that the characters are dealing with a rise in fascism and capitalism, which couldn’t be more relevant right now.
RF: The show is being described as “part documentary, part autobiography, part disco.” Tell us how you settled on that distinctive combination..
JH: While we were developing it, I was telling some stories about my first introduction to theater, and I went all the way back to theatre camp and talked about a time in the 70s when I had this counsellor who was super serious. He was trying to do Archibald MacLeish’s J.B., a modern retelling of the story of Job—with teenagers! And it was Neena who came up with doing the play by framing it through autobiography. So, it’s like going back to when you first connected with a play and now looking at it again as an adult; like how fascinating it would be for me to go back and read J.B. again. Any of these pieces that you scratch the surface with when you’re young, then revisit them again years later, take on so much greater importance. And that’s how A Mother has autobiographical elements because we look at where this teenage mind was and then we travel forward in time. It spotlights the awakening of a very naïve character, as well into a moment of political activism. And disco was so much a part of that period when I was sneaking into those places with a fake I.D. So, we’ve filled the play with dancing and song—because it’s Brecht!
Zane Pais, Fergie Philippe, Delilah Napier, Jessica Hecht, and Portia: The cast of A Mother.
The Brecht influence will be covered in one of the quartet of talkbacks that are being offered post-performance. For ticket information, please visit: https://baryshnikovarts.org/performance/a-mother/
Disco Night Party (April 3)
Disco, dancing, food, drinks, and a DJ with special guests including the cast of A Mother and original artwork by Gwen Smith. Limited tickets available. Tickets for the Disco Dance Party start at $100. VIP tickets available for $200.
Brecht Talkback (April 4)
The panel will include the distinguished Brecht scholars Anthony Squiers and Joerg Esleben. Included in performance ticket price.
Talkback (April 11)
Q&A with the performers and creative team. Included in performance ticket price.
Gospel Concert (April 13)
Join the musical team of A Mother for a special gospel concert directly after the performance. Included in performance ticket price.
A Mother is at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, 450 W 37th Street, NYC in a strictly limited engagement from March 29th to April 13th. It will feature music by Composers Mustapha Khan, William Kenneth Vaughan, and Norman (Skip) Burns with Music Direction by Khan. Set design will be by Neil Patel; costume design by Katherine Roth; and lighting design by Matthew Richards. The show is produced in partnership with producers Lana Russell and Susan Kaplan in association with The Orchard Project, which supported A Mother in its labs in 2020.
Photos by Deborah Lopez.
Headline Photo: Jessica Hecht.