Staceyann Chin’s “Motherstruck” is funny, heartbreaking and joyful
Staceyann Chin's quest to become a mother is recounted in her deeply personal, engaging one-woman show.
“I think there’s some discrimination,” says Staceyann Chin. “The catchphrase these days is ‘implicit bias,’ where they’re like, ‘Oh, we don’t want a lesbian performing here,’ or ‘a lesbian wouldn’t do so much [business for us]’…because people don’t come to see it.”
Fortunately for Chin, that’s not the case at Studio Theatre, which has fully embraced her autobiographical one-woman show Motherstruck, awarding it a top-notch production that’s as invigorating as it is insightful. It’s the story of a woman — Chin — and her obsessive quest to become a parent. The 80-minute show is funny, harrowing, heartbreaking, intense and joyful, bundled in an explosive performance by the poet.
Chin readily acknowledges she’s no actor, though you’d never know it. Her words — meticulous, precise, resonant — and her exuberant delivery keeps the audience rapt. “I only know how to immediately begin a conversation with the audience,” she says. “I think that’s the thing that makes this play work.” Motherstruck had its origins in New York, where it was directed by Cynthia Nixon. Studio’s production is helmed by Matt Torney, which Chin says has only made it even more potent.
“I’ve grown in leaps and bounds under Matt’s direction,” she says. “He forced me to think about every line. He insisted that I live in truth with the story…. Cynthia helped me to find the shape of the play, but Matt allowed me to make sure that everything that happened on stage was about the truth of it. He deeply believed that my story, as it actually happened, would ring truer than any kind of crafted tale.”
Though the overall narrative follows Chin’s attempt to get pregnant (and remain so) through intrauterine insemination, the show touches on aspects as disparate as homophobia in Chin’s native Jamaica, her strained relationships with her self-absorbed mother and overbearing aunt, and the ongoing rise of nontraditional family structures.
“Stories like these are on the rise,” say Chin. “Stories about single mothers, stories about dads raising kids by themselves, stories about people who are having children in a kind of nontraditional, non-heteronormative, non-nuclear way…. Some people are living together but not getting married. Some people are adopting one kid and biologically having another one. Some people inherit a kid from a relative who died. There are so many ways that families are formed. I want to say that for sure, there is something that is unique in this story in that it’s about this character that’s got no lick of sense. She doesn’t know when to stay down. Staceyann doesn’t really know when to stop. But it really is a mirror for how our lives are lived in today’s world.”
To Oct. 23 at the Studio Theatre, 1501 14th Street NW. Tickets start at $45. Call 202-332-3300 or visit studiotheatre.org.
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