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Because Your Mother Deserves It All

clevercupcakes / Flickr / Creative Commons

An archetype familiar to us all is “mother." If you aren't a mother yourself, you've most certainly had one.

May is the month that we honor mothers, according to greeting card companies across the country, and mothers everywhere are waiting expectantly for the brunch and bouquet that have become our traditional go-to gifts for Mother's Day. If you think your mom deserves more for her efforts than a champagne cocktail and a corsage, you might try something different—a night at the theatre, celebrating your mother and hers.

The Wichita Community Theatre is performing Motherhood Out Loud, a series of scenes, playlets and monologues that traces the arc that begins with birth and concludes at the end of life. A number of writers were involved in the creation of the script, including Pulitzer-prize winner Beth Henley, and, traditionally, most of the actors play more than one character. Joan Stein, who came up with the concept with Susan R. Rose, said in an interview, “There's one word—motherhood—that describes a zillion different experiences. It's an umbrella, and no one's experiences are the same, so what we're trying to do is to create a community where people can share their stories.”

Give your mother something special this year. Motherhood Out Loud is on stage at Wichita Community Theatre from May 6th to the 10th. Then afterwards, buy her the champagne cocktail and carnations anyway. Because she's your mother, and she deserves to have it all.

Sanda Moore Coleman received an MFA in creative writing from Wichita State University in 1991. Since then, she has been the arts and community editor for The Martha's Vineyard Times, a teaching fellow at Harvard University, and an assistant editor at Image. In 2011, she received the Maureen Egan Writers Exchange prize for fiction from Poets & Writers magazine. She has spent more than 30 years performing, reviewing, and writing for theatre.