My Mother Had Two Faces makes its Boston debut at The Rockwell at 255 Elm Street in Somerville, MA on Sunday, March 3rd at 2:00pm. Coming off a successful world premiere in Los Angeles, Boston is the second stop on the production’s tour before heading Off-Broadway for The United Solo Festival on March 14th and then onto the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August. The play is written and performed by local theater artist Karin Trachtenberg and directed by Jessica Lynn Johnson. For information and tickets, go to: https://www.therockwell.org/calendar/my-mother-had-two-faces-all-ages/
The 65-minute piece is billed as “a humorous and moving journey of self-reflection, presented in a pseudo-fairy tale style”, utilizing multimedia and theatrical masks. Theater Mirror spoke last week with Trachtenberg as she prepared for the Somerville performance:
Theater Mirror: I know you wear many hats in theater, but are you a writer? How did this piece originate?
Karin: I’ve been involved in theater for 40-plus years as an actor/director/producer/teacher, but this is the first thing I’ve written for stage.
Theater Mirror: How did the piece originate?
Karin: My mother passed from Alzheimer’s in 2020, and we couldn’t have a funeral for her (because of COVID). I had taken some old photos and memories of her life and posted them on Facebook, and some people were like, ‘Wow, this is fascinating. You should write a one-woman show about her.’
I’m a huge fan of Greek drama, and in 2022, I went to Greece to perform at a theater on an island outside of Athens. When I finished the play, for some reason, it just hit me, ‘I want to do a one-woman show,’ and I wanted to do it about my mother. Initially, I thought I would somehow tie in with the strong Greek women characters like Medea, Hecuba, and Cassandra. That was my original idea – that I would somehow weave that aspect in.
After she passed, I was clearing out her apartment, and there were all these diaries that I had just put in a box. So when I began taking writing workshops, all these memories and things started to come out, and I was allowing myself to just write. When I started writing about her, I picked up one of her diaries from 1965 – which meant that I was 3 1/2 to 4 years old – and I started to find things in that diary that were really kind of shocking yet validating. It allowed me to understand what she was going through at the time and what was going on with me as an adult.
Theater Mirror: What was it about your mother that made you want to write a show around her?
Karin: She grew up in Switzerland but left there at 19. She went to England and learned English, and then she moved to New York City in the mid-50s. She studied at the neighborhood playhouse, had some minor successes like summer stock, etc., and did some modeling. She then moved to Hollywood and lived at the Hollywood Studio Club for Women. It was a little discouraging because of the casting couch, so she came back to New York and moved in with my dad and lived in the West Village – which was a very risqué thing to do at the time (1959), but it was also very much the New York village lifestyle. She became pregnant with me and then got married, so there’s a whole lot of issues around that and giving up her own dreams.
My mother was also very focused on her outer appearance, literally spending 2 hours a day making herself up and preparing herself for the dayin front of her vanity table. And that became the focal point of my show – the mirror. It then developed into me having a conversation with my own mirrored image, so the show is all about all kinds of reflections: how we reflect in the mirror and how we reflect on our own experiences.
Theater Mirror: Does the piece tie back to Greek drama as you originally envisioned?
Karin: As I was writing this, I started writing about my mother’s face because that was what she was really fixated on. She was a beautiful woman, but she had these two faces. The one I saw as a four-year-old was the perfect face, and then there was this really monstrous kind of face that came out, too. That’s when I decided I wanted to do masks (created by Somerville artist Eric Bornstein of Behind the Mask Studio), and that’s my homage to Greek theater and the archetypes that emerged from that.
Theater Mirror: The show sounds deeply personal. Does it have a universal feel that others can relate to?
Karin: From my experience in theater. I would say the more specific and personal, the more people can relate to it. And if you’re just general, then people don’t relate to it.
Theater Mirror: How do you think your mother would feel about the show and your depiction of her?
Karin: When I was writing this, I was actually afraid at first because I didn’t really want to demonize her. I am showing the vulnerable sides and the less attractive sides, which we all have, but until you can embrace all sides (of your being), you’ll always be in denial, and you can’t be fully whole or really forgive yourself until you accept all parts of yourself. The piece is actually a celebration of my mother’s life. I’m taking the show to New York – to 42nd St., So I feel like I’m taking my mom to 42nd St. This was her dream, and the fact that we’re doing this together, even posthumously, is very meaningful to me.
