Character Breakdown: MOTHER PLAY Cast Unpacks Their Roles
Apr 19, 2024
Previews are now underway for Second Stage's newest play- Paula Vogel's Mother Play. In this video, watch as the cast unpacks their roles!
Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:00
I mean she hits about every note you can imagine on the scale
0:15
We cover four decades of time, which in itself is very challenging and exciting to discover
0:30
And the character, you know, there are certain things that resonate as far as what you know
0:39
about your own personal experience. And then there are things that are so outside your wheelhouse that to try to imagine how
0:50
something like that happens is, you know, opens up a whole other vista
0:57
So it's a play about a family and Jessica Blain is the mother and Jim Parsons is my
1:02
brother and I'm the daughter and it spans all the way from, we start the play in 1964
1:11
and so we cover a lot of ground. And you know Paula has talked a lot about how many family plays there are in the sort
1:20
of American canon. We have Glass Menagerie, Long Day's Journey into Night, but very few of these family plays
1:27
were written by women, maybe Lorraine Hansberry, she's sort of the exception
1:32
But Paula wanted to write a play and she also felt like so many of these family plays are
1:37
about mothers and sons and she felt that it would be interesting to tackle a play about
1:43
mothers and daughters. And there's, we have a difficult mother, she's a complex and powerful woman but she's tough
1:56
And so I think being a mother myself, I certainly have a lot of empathy for her but I also have
2:06
a lot of complicated feelings. I kind of get chills thinking about it
2:11
Carl is based on her, Paula's real life brother Carl and also Carl is the same Carl that was
2:18
in Baltimore Walls and he was her best friend, he was her older brother, he was probably
2:27
the most important influence in her life, certainly in a creative way
2:33
He died in his 30s from AIDS and that's why she wrote Baltimore Walls for him
2:39
And oh gosh, I will say this, going back to your first question was why I remember now
2:46
I was the most nervous. Carl is so much more cultured than I am, I didn't know how to pronounce half the things
2:52
he was talking about and I was like, what is, huh? There's still like pieces of music like, Virginie de Angelis, I'm like, oh, oh, Carl, you're
3:02
so smart, you're so well-read. And he's just playful and creative and he's fun and he's so adoring and protective of
3:13
his younger sister and as someone myself who has a younger sister, that's been very special
3:21
to get to go through this journey with Celia on that, yeah
#Movies
#Acting & Theater
#Family & Relationships
#Drama Films
#Family Films
#Broadway & Musical Theater


