Expressing Motherhood

What is Expressing Motherhood?

Expressing Motherhood is a gathering of voices and stories all about the journey of motherhood. Since 2008 #ExMoShow has showcased women (and men) sharing their personal stories on stage. Initially created and produced in Los Angeles by “two moms who had never done anything like it before.” Since, Expressing Motherhood has been taken on the road to an Off-Off-Broadway theater in New York City and to numerous other cities from Boston to Tacoma. 

The Merryall Center is thrilled to be its next stop in bringing these stories to our stage for our Litchfield County community. It’s an opportunity to share with one another in spoken word, monologue, skit, or song all the nuances and experiences that are forever attached to motherhood.

INTRODUCING THE CAST OF EXPRESSING MOTHERHOOD

Missy Alexander - Missy is provost emerita from Western Connecticut State University, where she served in administration for 11 years. She has a PhD in Media Ecology from New York University and even in retirement she continues to study the impact of communication and communication technologies on education, politics, and society more generally. She is a singer/songwriter, performing in both The Red Dirt Girls and Yours Truly. She serves on the boards of the Merryall Center and the Sherman Players, bringing her administrative, arts, and carpentry skills to the tasks at hand.

Melinda Buckley - Melinda is a writer, performer, and director who has appeared on Broadway and in national tours of Crazy for You, A Chorus Line (with Donna McKechnie), and Bob Fosse’s Sweet Charity. She’s performed sketch and improv with Gotham City Improv and Chicago City Limits, and appeared as a stand-up at Caroline’s, Stand-Up NY, and Gotham Comedy Club. Her acclaimed solo show, MOTHER (and me), debuted at the NYFringe Festival and was later developed by Tony Award-winning producer Barbara Whitman, with subsequent runs at Second Stage, Bay Street Theatre, and Chicago Shakes. As a director/choreographer, Melinda has worked on everything from Town Hall’s Broadway by the Year to CBS promos that aired during the Super Bowl. She choreographed musical sequences for Stuart Little I & II, collaborated with Pat Birch on Working Girl and Saturday Night Live, and was assisted Lonny Price (as SDC Fellow) on the filmed production of Company at the NY Philharmonic. In addition to her work in theater and film, she’s also a creative director/writer and speaker coach for major brands including Microsoft, American Express, and Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Dean Gray - Dean is a playwright and stage manager. His plays, Farm Boys, Uncle, and The Pattern at Pendarvis have been produced in NY, MN and CA. He is currently adapting Desert Pilgrim, a memoir by Mary Swander, poet laureate emeritus of IA, for the stage.

Michelle Joyner - Michelle is an actor/director/writer and storyteller living in Great Barrington, Mass. In this area she has directed and acted at Great Barrington Public Theatre, Shakespeare and Co, Chester Theatre and Dorset Theater, where her production of True Art last season was voted the 2nd best production in the Berkshires. She has a long list of acting credits in film and television, and most people remember her from the movie Cliffhanger, where Sly Stallone dropped her off a mountain cable in the opening sequence. Michelle has written 10 studio screenplays, and her first play IODINE is workshopping and will hopefully be in production in the near future. She is a repeat MOTH performer and leads a women's writing group THE LONG TABLE. www.michellejoyner.com

Danielle Langin - Danielle is a poet and writer whose work explores home, belonging, and the beauty of everyday life. Her poems create space for readers to pause, reflect and discover their own path to transformation. Danielle is currently working on her debut poetry collection, and shares her writing and creative process on her Substack, Growing Through It. Beyond the page, she finds meaning in life through family, travel, and the daily rhythms of motherhood.

Pam Levanos - Pam is the proud mother of three incredible adult children. She makes her home in Providence, Rhode Island by way of Boston and New York. Pam is honored to return to Expressing Motherhood for a second time and believes in the power of storytelling to connect and celebrate the journey of motherhood. 

Lou Mandler - Lou is a native of Montana, but she lived and worked in Colorado, Alberta, and Idaho before attending the Bread Loaf School of English in Vermont, where she met her husband, who taught at Canterbury School. Thereafter, Lou began a decades-long career as a teacher and administrator at Canterbury. In retirement, she is involved in community organizations such as the Commission on the Arts and the Cultural District Commission. Lou has published a memoir, This Storied Land; a biography, Montana’s Visionary Mayor. Willard E. Fraser; and articles on Ernest Hemingway. Her reading tonight is from a completed memoir that is ready for a publisher.

Susanna Marker - Susanna is a singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and mother of two from Sherman. She performs with several bands including The Red Dirt Girls, Tuned In, and Lumos. Her songs are written from experiences both lived and imagined, and, hopefully, you can recognize something of your own in them. Motherhood is fertile ground, and she has many songs that have blossomed there. Thanks so much to the Merryall Center for providing this opportunity, and to YOU for listening! 

Kathryn Mayer - Kathryn is a potty-mouth essayist writing out loud about the minutiae of real life, social issues, and midlife angst at http://www.kathrynmayer.com. She is occasionally funny on Instagram @kathykatemayer, ignores Facebook, and screw the platform formerly known as Twitter. She’s a recent reluctant inductee to AARP, raised four and a half flown & grown, off-the-payroll voting adults, and due to crappy genetics, is an unfortunate hospice expert. An aspiring writer with the rejections to prove it, her essays appear on-line, in-print, and when possible, on a mic in front of listening ears and open hearts.

Francesca McCulloch - Francesca was born in Italy, where she lived until she was 12, grew up in London, and eventually shipped to New York to get her Master’s in Architecture & Urban Planning. On the brink of heading back to Europe, she met her husband, a Colorado transplant living in the Big Apple, where they decided to make it their permanent home. She’s an avid tennis player and voracious reader, and when not doing either of those things, you can find her rocking at a concert. Connecticut became home just after COVID, and she has not once regretted the switch to the bucolic lifestyle, sharing a 'farm' with her husband, teenage daughter, and 12-year-old son, as well as a grumpy lab mix named Buck and some very opinionated chickens.

Jean O’Neill - Jean has lived in the Danbury area for 30+ years. Most of those were spent being a mom to three and a daughter to two who needed a hand in their later years. Around that, she worked for local newspapers and sold real estate; the best part of which was people's stories. After getting that first Social Security check a year ago, Jean found her way into a poetry workshop, which has essentially led her here.

Jessica Ryan - Jessica has a bachelor’s degree in English.  She enjoys writing short stories and poetry.  She loves to sing and has performed in Carnegie Hall and the Bosendorfer Choral Festival in Vienna, Austria.  More recently, she played Edna Krabappel in Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play at the Brookfield Theatre.

Rebecca Salomonsson - Rebecca is a writer, theatre artist, and educator. Originally from Colorado, she has been living in CT with her family for two years. She is happy to be a part of “Expressing Motherhood.”

Mary Vallo - Mary is a New Milford mother and grandmother, writer and former magazine editor. She has written two children’s books and her essays and poetry have appeared in anthologies and journals. Her parenting column, Musings, won a Gold Award from Parenting Publications of America.

Local Producer/Alice Schuette - Alice has had a handful of careers and pursuits over the years, with writing being a constant friend throughout all journeys. She’s contributed to numerous news outlets and websites, and her creative work has been featured in the anthology This One Has No Name as well as in Feminine Collective. For almost a decade, she’s led Writing in the Raw workshops in her community, focusing on memoir. Alice’s passion for writing and education naturally led her into the classroom, where she’s worked as a tutor, literacy interventionist, and, most recently, as a college writing professor. One of her biggest thrills was performing a piece for Expressing Motherhood in 2019 at the Thrown Stone Theatre in Ridgefield, CT. This experience inspired her to continue story sharing on stage, most recently at a Moth StorySLAM in New York City, earning the night’s highest house score. When Alice joined the board at the Merryall Center, she immediately knew it would be the perfect venue to bring Expressing Motherhood to her local community. She’s honored to be part of the Expressing Motherhood tribe, helping to amplify authentic voices—a process she believes is one of the bravest and most life-giving experiences, second only to motherhood itself.

Local Co-Director/Michael Schuette - Michael is thrilled to Co-Direct Expressing Motherhood. With roots in New York City’s theater and media scene, Michael spent over 16 years working in educational theater, local commercials, and producing corporate industrials. Today, he continues to draw on that creative background to inspire and lead product teams at work and also to support artistic voices that inspire connections like the ones at Merryall Center.