Play looks at motherhood, support and women

A teenage boy commits a violent crime. Shock. Confusion. Anger. Disbelief. How could it happen and I did not know?

That is the central question a mother asks herself when she is placed in this terrifying tragedy in The Mothers running Feb. 26 to March 4 at the Alberta Avenue Community League.

A precursor to the 2015 SkirtsAfire herArts Festival, this one-woman show features Annette Loiselle under the direction of Glenda Stirling.

Playwright Nicole Moeller starts the action a year after the event as the mother is selling her house and moving to a new community to make a fresh start.

“She is trying to unravel what happened that day and what happened in the family to make her beautiful baby boy commit such a violent crime,” says Stirling describing the 90-minute show.

Throughout the play, the mother faces a dilemma.

“Does she move forward and that requires letting go of the son she knew or imagined, or does she hang on in this place where she is consistently trying to unravel what happened?”

To find a satisfactory resolution Stirling says, the mother must go down the rabbit hole farther than she’s ever gone and come out the other side.

Like most married woman, the mother lives an incredibly normal life with a busy full-time job, two teenagers and an at times difficult marriage.

“She does the best she can, and has an especially close relationship with her son. So how could she not know what he was thinking?”

Through the course of rehearsals, Stirling and Loiselle often discussed the mothers of CBC host Jian Ghomeshi and Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, the gunman who shot a soldier in Ottawa.

What must have the mothers of these two men undergone when news of their sons’ exploits were posted for the world to see.

“In a way, this play is all about these women. Somehow mothers are held responsible for how their children turn out. Research shows that when teens behave badly, nine out of 10 times the mothers are the focus of research.”

But Stirling notes that the play also looks at the way women support each other – not just tear each other down.

“The mother of the Ottawa shooter was expecting judgment. Instead she received incredible support from her co-workers.”

The Mothers is an intricate story with complex layers and Stirling has high praise for Moeller’s fine-tuned script.

“She has an incredible ear for dialogue. She captures how well people speak. If the dialogue doesn’t sound right, she’s quick to clock it and make it sound right. It’s also very nuanced and there’s a lot of subtext that doesn’t make it feel forced.”

As for Loiselle’s contribution?

“She’s a workhorse. She and Nic have that in common. They work hard and are very precise. Being a generalist isn’t good enough. Annette is very good at expressing emotion on an epic scale or a small, delicate way.”

As a one-person show, The Mothers veers away from the traditional format of an actor’s virtuosity performing a marathon of characters. This solo show instead is about the realities a character must face.

The March 3 performance will also feature a post-show panel discussion moderated by Edmonton Journal columnist Paula Simons. Panelists include school resource officer Constable Greg Schlender, psychologist Thomas Holmes and school counselor Nicole Drysdale.