The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
New parents ‘Cry It Out’ at Hartford Stage
Rachel Alderman directs ode to modernday motherhood
Upandcoming stage director Rachel Alderman of New Haven knows the territory of Hartford Stage’s new production “Cry It Out,” running Wednesday, Oct. 24, to Nov. 17.
The Molly Smith Metzlerwritten play is described as an ode to modernday motherhood with all its sleep deprivation, childcare challenges and backtowork guilt and challenges.
“It takes place within the first three months of four new parents experiencing new parenthood for the first time,” Alderman said recently in a phone chat.
We asked Alderman, whose first full professional directing job was in 2016 with “A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story of Christmas” at Hartford Stage, if she was able to draw from her own experience as parent of a 3and 6yearold.
“Oh, hell, yes,” she laughed. “This play... is close directly to my sleepdeprived heart. And I’ve read a lot of other plays that have tackled the newparenthood experience, and when I read Molly’s play, I kind of was wondering if she had some kind of lens trained on my house from the past six years.”
Alderman, who grew up in New York and studied theater in college, did some acting in New York City and Chicago before settling in New Haven, where she’s been active in the sitespecific theater company A Broken Umbrella.
In the Elm City, she also worked for the International Festival of Arts & Ideas for four years until she joined Hartford Stage as an apprentice and followed Michael Wilson as associate director at several theaters across the country, returning to Hartford Stage to handle “A Christmas Carol” (thanks in part to her knowledge of community values in a theater) and has worked with Darko Tresnjak. She has also worked with New Haven’s Collective Consciousness Theatre.
As for the look of the fourcastmember show, Alderman said, “The sound stage and the costumes are quite naturalistic in our play, but the set and probably the lighting will lean
more toward conceptual and try to get at the heart of emotional center of the play.”
“Cry It Out” is a femalewritten and directed show, which is a desirable point of diversity today.
“I think the more voices that are represented on stage, across the board, is really important,” she said. “When people can tell their own stories, then audiences can see themselves... on stage.”
When Alderman read this play, she felt very “seen,” and with more writers doing plays from different points of view, “the more authenticity you have, the more truth you have, the more compassion and empathy will follow.
“And it’s not just about women on stages; it’s about all voices,” she said. Men, too? “They’re going to see themselves on stage, too. Molly writes about fatherhood as well. The thing we’ve been learning in the rehearsal room ... is it’s important to have everybody in the room (parents and nonparents). Because if you’re not a parent, you know parents, and you are part of a community with parents.”
Which brings Alderman to the play’s essential focus — community.
“Truly what this play is about is that we’re all part of an ecosystem, a village, and the more support there is for people raising children, and the more fluidity there is between parents and nonparents and caregivers of all kinds (the better). Everybody is going to find themselves in a caretaking position, whether at the beginning, at birth or the end of life . ... You can’t avoid it.”
At points in people’s lives of joy and birth and death and crisis, “most important are people, and everything else falls away, and we only focus on sustaining each other as human beings,” Alderman said.
The darkly funny play “doesn’t tie everything up in a bow,” the director said. Adapting to a new baby has “its own humor and ridiculousness and there’s just a keen sense that life is funny and if you don’t embrace it, you know, you’re gonna die.”
A theater official pointed out that the play “is taking the country by storm; there have been over 50 productions since 2018.”
Alderman says it’s because “There’s a rawness and a ridiculousness and a delirium to the world of this play that is so true to real life. Molly (also a young parent in 2012, said Alderman) captures the essence of those first three months of new parenthood in all their messy glory.”
Another Connecticut connection is actress Caroline Kinsolving, who lives in Litchfield County and grew up in Bridgewater. She plays one of the new moms.
Also opening this late⏩ October week is a new dark comedy at the Yale Drama School at the Iseman Theater on Chapel Street. “Mr. Burns” (Oct. 26Nov. 1) is described as a postelectric play by Anne Washburn: “In the aftermath of a catastrophic nuclear event, a ragtag band of survivors forges a sense of community by recounting episodes of ‘The Simpsons’ and other bits of pop culture. Generations later, their memories have transformed into an epic myth for a new postapocalyptic society.” It’s about storytelling and the commercialization of art.