'Motherhood Out Loud' Opens Thursday in Southampton

Center Stage's next production takes on the subject of being a mother, in all its forms — biological, adoptive, surrogate, etc.

"I would like to think of this evening as a celebration of the one occupation where retiring is never a consideration," director Michael Disher said of "Motherhood Out Loud," the play conceived by Susan R. Rose and Joan Stein that assembles a series of monologues by American writers.

Leslie Ayvazian, David Cale, Jessica Goldberg, Beth Henley, Lameece Issaq, Claire LaZebnik, Lisa Loomer, Michele Lowe, Marco Pennette, Theresa Rebeck, Luanne Rice, Annie Weisman and Cheryl L. West all wrote on the experience of motherhood.

Starting Thursday at the Southampton Cultural Center, the writers' words will be brought to life by the Center Stage cast: Dan Becker, Valerie J. DiLorenzo, Adam Fronc, Barbara Jo Howard, Kasia Klimiuk, Joan Lyons, Josephiine Wallace, Edna Winston and Susan Wojcik.

"Motherhood Out Loud" had its Manhattan premiere in 2011 with nonprofit theater company Primary Stages, an incubator of new works, but two years earlier it was performed in a weekend-long engagement at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton Village in a Bay Street @ The Parrish special event, through Sag Harbor's Bay Street Theatre.

According to Southampton Cultural Center, "Motherhood Out Loud" shatters preconceptions of parenthood and is "a joyous, moving, hilarious, and altogether thrilling theatrical play."

"Motherhood Out Loud" runs from March 7 to March 24 on Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2:30 p.m.  General admission is $22, and students with ID are $12. For tickets, visit southamptonculturalcenter.org.