Listen To Your Mother!

No, I'm not telling you to do that. (I figure by now you know whether or not your mother is someone it makes sense to listen to.) And I'm not telling your kids (if you ARE a mother) to listen to you - they should be already doing that, like mine always listen to ME. (Yeah, right, and do you want to buy a bridge?)

What I am doing is ANNOUNCING something really IMPORTANT (which is why I am SHOUTING here in ALL CAPS):

The cities and production teams for the ten 2012 Listen To Your Mother shows have just been announced. And... And... YES! I am the producer of the New York City show!

I've been wanting to tell you forever, but couldn't spill the beans, nearly lost my mind waiting for the official announcement.  What a RELIEF!

Click above to see the national announcement on the LTYM official site

I'll be working with a wonderful team: besides me as Producer there's the lovely and amazingly talented Amy Wilson who will be the Director, with Holly Fink and Julie Nemitz joining us as Associate Producers.

Also? The folks taking this on in the other nine sites across the country read like a who's who of fabulous blogger/writers. It's truly going to be an amazing series of events. Go to the LTYM announcement post to see who all is on board.

If you don't know what all this is about? Here it is (liberally stolen cribbed from the LTYM site in the words of Ann Imig who started this whole thing):

LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER (LTYM) is a national series of live readings by local writers in celebration of Mother's Day. Born of the creative work of mothers who publish online, each production is directed, produced, and performed by local communities, for local communities.

LTYM began with one show of local writers reading in Madison Wisconsin on Mother’s Day 2010.  The video of the show was posted online in its entirety, and so LTYM reached a global audience and garnered a huge response.

Bloggers across the country began asking to host LTYM in their home towns, and so in 2011 Ann took the project national with shows in 5 cities across the country.

The mission of each LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER production is to take the audience on a well-crafted journey that celebrates and validates mothering through giving voice to motherhood–in all of its complexity, diversity, and humor.

LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER aims to support motherhood creatively through artistic expression, and also financially – through contributions to non-profit organizations supporting families in need.

So there you have it! A lot of my bloggy friends participated in this year's show (including the incomparable Alexandra of Good Day Regular People) and got me excited about the idea of bringing it to New York City next spring.

This summer at the BlogHer11 conference in San Diego, there was a LTYM open mike event on Friday evening, and, fortunately, my name was drawn out of the hat to read.

I read a sweet, sad post about time spent with my elderly mother (H is for Holding Hands) and the experience was wonderful. The room was packed; overflowing even with women sprawled on the floor as well as the furniture. And I made some of them cry. And then the next reader made them laugh.

(And then Deb Rox of Deb on the Rocks read a piece that was so funny, she made us all laugh so hard there was a mad rush for the bathroom afterward because some of us *might* have peed our pants a little - definite specific hazard in a room full of women who have had our pelvic girdle kicked from the inside one too many times.)

That's what's so wonderful about this show, it's the whole panoply of the mothering experience, both being and having a mother.

And, oh, did I mention yet that BlogHer is actually a national sponsor of this whole shindig again this year (it just keeps getting better and better) so THANK YOU, BlogHer, you wonderful women you!

So stay tuned for upcoming posts in the future about both the audition process (if you want to be in the show) and the ticket sales (if you want to come see the show). Also? I realized I have told very few tales of my history in the theater (bet you didn't even know I HAD one, right?) so this should cue a bunch of those to be forthcoming soon, too.

Just think: New York City in the late 80's and early 90's, Lower East Side, Off-Off Broadway, performance artists, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival... Hmmmm, some tales to tell, indeed...



Looking for comments? To read or leave a comment, click on THIS post's title, or HERE, to bring you to the post's page view. Comments should appear below.