Mothers with Moxie
Posted by Sylvia Ewing on 3/18/2008
April and May will be very busy months for everyone who works on the Traffic series, but right now is a bit like the calm before the storm. So I have a few minutes for reflection on my start here at Steppenwolf, including when I first met ensemble member Tracy Letts as I worked on my first show as a staffer. I was so excited, proud and a little nervous about bringing the Blues/Hip-Hop Intersection to Millennium Park, so naturally I invited my mom to come out from our hometown in Erie, PA and see the show. She hemmed and hawed and finally said, “I don’t want to see your damn show. I’m 70 years old and I’m just not interested.” This is a woman with enough moxie to work in the church food pantry for 12 hours on one day, and shop the mall in her stilettos the next. She has the energy of person decades younger, and the will to do anything she wants to do. The fact that she did not want to do this with me hurt. But I had just seen Violet Weston, the pill popping manipulator and matriarch of August: Osage County, a character with an arsenal of venom carefully aimed to inflict maximum damage on her family. I owe a debt of gratitude to Tracy Letts for creating Violet Weston, and for context on what makes a truly bad mother. My mom is loving and supportive, really. Her only brutality comes in her honesty about how she wants to use her time.
I hope you’ll want to use your time to come to Steppenwolf on April 14 for A Celebration of Sketch Comedy with Schadenfreude and kevINda. These guys are hot now with a TV pilot taping on WTTW and with Schadenfreude featured in a big Chicago magazine spread in April. Many well-informed Steppenwolf fans bought tickets back when the season was announced last fall.
You won’t see my mother, but you will enjoy a night of humor, and insight into politics, race, and (yes) family relationships!