Metro Pulse/Backstage/Mothers' Day Matinee

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What:
A Mother's Day Matinee by the Actors Co-op and Knoxville Jazz Orchestra

When:
Sunday, May 13 at 2 and 5 p.m.

Where:
The Black Box Theatre, 5213 Homberg Drive

$10. Call 523-0900 for reservations

A tribute to the maternal in theater and song

by Paige M. Travis

Ponder, if you will, the following radically non-cynical notion: National holidays don't exist to pressure us into spending money on cards and gifts, but instead to help us remember what's important in life. For instance, Thanksgiving is about being thankful (and eating food), Valentine's Day is about expressing our love and appreciation (with flowers and chocolate), and Mother's Day, which is upon us this Sunday, May 13, is about Mom (and whatever her little heart desires).

If any profession deserves a national holiday (and paid vacation leave) it's the lifetime career that is motherhood. Mothers aren't simply the women who give birth to us, raise us and send us on our merry way. They are living archetypes, held up to a set of complex and sometimes ridiculous standards that have been developing since time began. Back in 1914 when President Woodrow Wilson named Mother's Day a national holiday, mothers were cooks, maids and caretakers for their families. They couldn't vote or hold important positions that they didn't marry into. Now, having more freedom and equality, women can, and should, be so many different things at once: career women, political activists, community leaders, gourmet cooks, household managers. You name it, Mom does it, with no hourly wage or insurance coverage.

To honor moms on their special day, the Actors' Co-op Beehive will team up with the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra to create a visual and aural portrait of the many faces of the women we call Mom. "It's a tribute to mothers of all kinds," says Beehive director Kara Kemp, who began developing the idea for the show after the KJO, still in its infancy, expressed interest in collaborating with the youthful theater company. Timing and the calendar pointed toward the theme of Mother's Day, as did recent news of Co-op Director Amy Hubbard's pregnancy. The holiday get its fair share of specialized greeting cards and bouquets, but the second Sunday in May is heretofore uncharted territory for theater.

"The band is only available on Sundays, and we had a slot open in May," Kemp says. "Amy and I had talked about a few pieces we might like to do, then we gave them to [orchestra leader] Vance Thompson, and he chose the music." After a few adjustments, a show was born.

The Mother's Day Matinee is a spoken and musical performance. In the free-form center of the Black Box Theatre, nine actresses use poems, song lyrics and prose to present portraits of motherhood, from a new mom, a mother of an adolescent, an immigrant mother, a divorced mom and an adult daughter who sees the roles reversed as she takes care of her aging mother. The words remind us that mothers are people, women, first and foremost. They have favorite songs, special talents, doubts and fears, flaws, whole other lives separate from their offspring. They have secrets. They have bodies and minds and memories of a time before they earned the name "Mom." They are also children to their own mothers, a relationship with its own dynamic that echoes into every facet of their past, present and future.

The show's final piece is Meg Beach's touching tribute to her mother, whose legacy is her facility in the kitchen. Beach's essay and dance piece chronicles her mother's traditions, like having roast on Sunday and hash on Monday and knowing exactly how to wield every piece of kitchenware including that "sacred symbol of the kitchen: the cast iron skillet." Anyone who wants the recipe for perfect cornbread should take notes.

As the "experimental second stage" of the Actors Co-op, Beehive productions are traditionally minimalist. Kemp's sense of visual art contributes the show's only sort of backdrop: a collage of pictures donated by members of the cast and orchestra including snapshots of assorted mothers, Pat Fitch's two daughters and the ultrasound of Hubbard's babe-on-the-way.

This duet with the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra marks the Co-op's first collaboration with a major musical organization. At first Kemp envisioned only a few players providing musical accompaniment, but more than a dozen musicians signed on for the show. The songs, interspersed between the spoken pieces, include Benny Goodman's "Birth of the Blues" and a song by Knoxville's own jazz legend Donald Brown. That the cast is entirely female is incidental, Kemp says, but the unison provides a good balance to the all-male jazz band. A kind of yin and yang share the Black Box stage, taking turns to honor the history and tradition of motherhood.

Motherhood will always inspire art, whether it's in reverent paintings of Mary and Jesus or frightening portrayals in Mommy Dearest. Moms are the stuff of fiction, comedy, melodrama and this spirited performance of poetry and music. If you think this holiday is just about flowers and greeting cards, this show might make you think again and recall the creative force that put you here in the first place.