Video: Caroline Aaron & Matt Doyle Are Getting Ready for CONVERSATIONS WITH MOTHER

Literally within the first like 10 pages, I just wrote back, I'm doing this

I'm going to finish reading it, but I'm absolutely doing this. Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World

Caroline Aaron and Matt Doyle are returning to the New York stage, starring in Matthew Lombardo's New Comedy, Conversations with Mother

is directed by Noah Himmelsstein, and they begin performance on February 7th at Theater 555

and I caught up with all of them here at the Legendary Sardis. I never expected to write the show

play. About 10 years, I was talking to my mother, and I hung up, and I was like, people would not

believe the stuff we talk about. And so I went on Facebook, and I posted the conversation

And people just responded to it. And so after I would have another conversation with my mother

I would post it. And this went on for a couple years. And, you know, my friends were saying

oh, you should really write a play on this. And I thought, I'm never going to write a play about my

mother. But then one night, I woke up at 3 o'clock in the morning, and it clicked. I figured out

how I can write this play, where it's not all linear, and it's just a series of snapshots

and exchanges over a six-year relationship. Welcome back to the stage. How does it feel

It's pretty exciting, but I'm working for a living. I'm pretty tired, I can tell you that

It's very exciting, though, and very challenging. What could be more fun than that

When you first got Matthews script, what made you say yes? I want to do this

What made me say yes? was that the character went from 37 to 77 So it was over a lifetime of being someone mother and watching them grow up and have how that relationship evolved and yet never changed

It's like I remembered when I first got this script and I didn't understand it until I read

the script. When I was in college, I'd had some big fight with my mother who knows what it was about

And she sent me an article from the newspaper in Richmond, Virginia, where I grew up

And the article's title was, how to be. a childless mother. And it was about the fact that I was no longer a child

but you don't know how to turn that spiket off. You're still a mother, and your children are like, back up

You know what I mean? Back off. I don't need you to do that anymore. And you go, but I'm still your mother

I can't help it. You will always be that to me. And that's sort of what his script is about is that, no matter how old and successful he gets

that's her baby. And I think that's okay. Literally within the first like 10 pages, I just wrote back, I'm doing this

I'm going to finish reading it, but I'm absolutely doing this. Matthew's wit, Matthew Lombardo, our wonderful writer, his wit is just so, so familiar to, I think, the comedy in my own household

And I recognize these characters. And I wanted to tell the story of the relationship between a mother and a gay son, because that is something very specific

It's not something that we see a lot in media told very. very specifically And I just was so drawn to their love and their bond And it something that I know my own family doesn even understand You know my sisters talk about it all the time Like I can tap into that I don know what it is I don know what you guys have I can figure it out But there is something really special between that bond and between a mother and a gay son And we get to celebrate that and recognize that friendship It just the two of them And you know we got these 12 scenes that we working on together And we mining all of the spaces in between the vibrational sort of essence between this relationship That kind of what it about It about two people

and how they grow and need each other over time and how they dig too deeply into each other's lives

and how they push each other away. And it just happens to be a mother and son over 50 years

So these two actors, it's extraordinary. I'm so lucky that we have them

and to grow with them during this upcoming preview process and run

It's funnier and deeper than I could have imagined. I'm playing Maria

and what I love about her is she's an Italian mother who makes no apology for her passions

She says constantly in the play, I was a good mother to you. I'm a good mother to you. She's reviewed her own self, going, I'm very good at this job of being your mother

And she's passionate and she is unreasonable. She makes a lot of mistakes, but everything in this play, I think, springs from the heart

it unapologetically full of heart And I think we live in a time right now where we don really get to sort of sink into that part of ourselves very often I love Bobby because Bobby acts out of passion when it comes to everything in his life He seeks different things to fall in love with He seeks different things to motivate him and

inspire him. And sometimes that leads to destruction because he never stops to think about it. And

I find a lot of similarities between me and him, you know, and it leads to a very destructive path for him

and one that I think is just a phenomenal story for Matthew to be able to tell

after years of personal battles of his own. And I was really just so enamored by the fact

that all of it, even his struggles, comes out of love, comes out of wanting to be validated

wanting to be seen, and wanting to be loved. And that kind of story

and all of the struggles that he had. They're so beautiful because they did come out of good intentions, you know

And I think that that's an important story to tell is sometimes we see people struggling with addiction or struggling with, you know, abuse

And you just, you judge them immediately and think, how could you possibly get there

But to understand that it all comes out of wanting to be validated is really special and I think really important to humanize

You know, the play deals with the universal themes of love, loss, forgiveness, acceptance, ambition, reconciliation

It's everything. Everyone will be able to relate to this play because we all have mothers or we all have a son or we know someone like a Bobby Calavecchio or we know someone like a Maria Calavecchio