Morgan Danielle Day delivers one of six monologues about motherhood in Matriarch
Who: The Roots and Wings Project
What: Livestream of six monologues
Where: Houston Coalition Against Hate online
When: Friday, October 8, free (donations accepted), 7:00 (available on demand through October 30)
Why: The Roots and Wings Project and the Houston Coalition Against Hate have teamed up to present Matriarch, a collection of six monologues and a song exploring the complex relationship between mothers and children in a patriarchal society. Filmed in front of a live, masked audience in the small backyard of the MKM Cultural Arts Center in Los Angeles, the show begins with Lioness, in which writer and Roots and Wings co-executive producer Jesse Bliss rails at an unseen man chastising her for breastfeeding in her parked car. “Fuck that,” she argues. “I’ll feed my baby wherever we need to handle it and it should elicit no kind of reaction and cause no kind of problem. . . . I birthed her, care for her, feed her. I could scream loud as fuck right now and it won’t bother her because we are a team. She wants me to chew your ass out. . . . . You’re trying to make shame out of something beautiful,” immediately establishing motherhood as a nurturing necessity and connection.
In The Truth about Perfecta, written by Obie winner Diane Rodriguez, who died of lung cancer in April 2020, Cristina Frias plays a mother defending herself against racist stereotypes. “I bet when you people look at me, you make assumptions about who I am, where I come from, who I belong to, who I love, how I love, where I live, how I live, who my friends are, how I manage my life, how much money I make, how I treat my kids. Well, don’t do that; you don’t know who I am, and you don’t know how I was raised.”
Some Things You Should Know about My Mom is a eulogy written by Gabriel Diamond and Tamar Halpern and performed by Diamond in front of a music stand. “You’ve been talking about Sandy the friend, the playwright, the sister, the calligrapher, the painter, the poet, all these things,” he says. ”I’m gonna talk about her as the mommy,” proceeding to tell stories about her decision to be a single mother and detailing her death.
Morgan Danielle Day is explosive as a young woman fighting the system in Taylor Lytle’s The Formula. Wearing a durag and face tattoos, Day fiercely proclaims, “I was criminalized long before I was ever incarcerated. I remember it like it was yesterday.” She recounts how her drug-addicted, sexually abused mother sent her off to foster care. “Now, it may be to you all a surprise that I was actually happy to get a foster home. Now, don’t get the wrong idea. I had a beautiful mother. I admire this woman for her strength. She was loving and caring and did what she could with what she had, period. . . . But there wasn’t a lot of room in this world for a single mother of twelve on welfare.”
Bahni Turpin sits down for Sigrid Gilmer’s Remember This . . . in which she portrays Margaret, a mother who is preparing her daughter for her impending death. “Oh, Angela. Please, dear,” she pleads. “Please, don’t. No tears, my darling. Stop it. I’m not going to discuss it. It is just dying. . . . I will not suffer any more than I have to. I will not waste away. You know, you don’t have to be here when I go.” She also admits, “I should have never had children.”
The evening concludes with Roger Q. Mason’s Age Sex Location, in which a fab Ramy El-Etreby dances onstage in glittery drag and proclaims, “Fat bitch / Black queen / Mixed breed mishap / Round nosed fag hoe / That’s what you think of me / As I walk down the street / My wide hips waddling / My fleshy neck obscuring a too-soft jawline.” He goes on to tell how he was rejected by his mother, father, and doctor, none of whom even tried to understand who he was, who he needed to be. The show also features a song by Sheila Govindarajan in which she sings, “Let me go / set me free,” along with snippets from Lizzo, Talking Heads, Nina Simone, Bob Dylan, Ella Fitzgerald, and Roberta Flack.
Created and directed by Bliss and photographed by Ivan Cordeiro, Matriarch debuts online October 8 at 7:00, followed by a panel discussion with several of the performers and Houston-area domestic violence prevention advocates, including Dr. Nusrat Ameen of Daya and Barbie Brashear of the Harris County Domestic Violence Coordinating Council, moderated by HCAH executive director Marjorie Joseph, and will be available on demand on YouTube and Facebook through October 30.