author: Chris Pence
Happy Mother’s Day 2025! If you need a gift for mom, or a reminder of all that mothers provide for us, Artistic Synergy of Baltimore’s Motherhood Out Loud is all you need! Conceived by Susan R. Rose and Joan Stein, Motherhood Out Loud is an all-encompassing view of motherhood, seen through a series of short scenes and monologues. Through honest, direct delivery, the show follows the mothering process from birth through schooling, marriage to divorce, and from a mother caring for a child to an adult caring for a parent. The show brings humor and heart, as well as drama and pain, giving the audience much to think about, opening their eyes to many issues they never would have expected their mom to be concerned over.
Director and Producer Temple Fortson, a four-time veteran of the show, creates a theatrical reality that shakes the audience to its core. Fortson’s direction focuses more on authenticity, giving the actors autonomy to develop characters of their own rather than assigning traditional roles. Through minimalistic staging and strong performing skills, Fortson draws attention solely to the characters’ stories, allowing them to build solid relationships with the audience. This lets the audience’s imagination craft the action of the story rather than traditional staging, inevitably leading them back to personal experiences that truly show all that a mother experiences throughout their lives.
Stage Manager Katie Petersen and Stagehands Eli Petersen and Ali Jacobs offer seamless transitions between scenes, moving just benches and curtains to portray the backdrop of the show. A simple motherly decal on the back wall let the audience know that “This is Our Story,” with photos of cast and crew that give the feeling of home, wherever home might be. Technical / Lighting / Sound Director Rowan Dejong adds simple but powerful additions to the show, with slow fading lights to give a second of thought before launching into the next scene. Some scenes also were prefaced with music clips to heighten the emotion of the scene.
The narration for Motherhood is color-coded, with each member of the ensemble assigned a designated color. Fortson’s cast embraces this with their costuming, each member of the cast incorporating their designated color into their wardrobe for each scene. This creates a sense of unity among the characters, a reminder that, though each character comes from a different background, they share many of the same traits.
Kara Kaskel, sporting green in each of her scenes, leads the cast as the proverbial baby of the group. Her youth and charm lead her to depict many of the children of the show. With a cocky strut, she offers the curious yet ignorant girl asking an adoptive mother how she came to have an American son and a Chinese daughter. Her long hair in pigtails, she also appears as the inquisitive little girl asking her great grandmother, played by an almost unrecognizable Brooke Jacobs, what it was that she liked most about being a mother, leading to her being bombarded with a history of motherhood before birth control and choice.
Brooke Jacobs, representing the purple, shines in her various scenes, particularly in her scene as an adoptive mother of a Chinese girl. Her insecurities about addressing how her adoptive baby came to her and how to explain it to nosy neighbors and children alike are no match for her devotion to her children. While her family dynamic may be different from the average, her love never wavers, struggling to understand why her child would be treated differently than any other, both at home and in the world at large.
Board member and founder of ASoB, Melissa Broy Fortson, sporting the red attire, brings a cavalcade of characters that range from a meddlesome mother asking about why another mom chose to adopt, to a concerned mom driving her autistic son home from a first date. While her comedic timing is flawless, Melissa’s undeniable talent in drama twinkles like the North Star in her monologue as a military mom awaiting the inevitable call that no mother ever wants to hear. Her heartbreaking delivery left no dry eye in the house, with most audience members reaching back to their childhood to remember a time when their mother was brought to tears over concerns about their safety.
Calla Fuqua, in yellow, brings commonality among diversity into the show with her performance as a Muslim mom trying to explain to her teenage daughter the particulars of menstruation as her daughter comes of age during the holy month of Ramadan. While the show offers many different types of moms from many different backgrounds, Fuqua’s performance is exceptional in her use of a subtle accent and a delivery free from stereotype or cliché as she spends much of the monologue reminiscing about her own concerns as a budding teenager. Her performance reminds us that, while cultural backgrounds and traditions may differ, there are some things that are universal, especially the love of a mother for her child.
In the blue outfits, Archie Kramer brings additional diversity to the mothers of the show as a divorced Jewish mother caring for a young boy who prefers wearing dresses. Kramer tells of the boy’s bullying at school, as well as his father forcing him into sports in order to quell his questions about his own sexuality and gender identity. The monologue also brings up concerns about religious and social issues concerning the boy’s wardrobe choices and his parents’ divorce, as his mother chooses to defy religious and social doctrine and allows her son to wear a dress to a Purim service. Kramer’s warmth and confidence demonstrates a mother’s undying love for her child, regardless of what their community might think or say.
The male representation of the performance comes in the form of Paul Ballard, the orange member of the group. While Ballard serves in some scenes as second fiddle to the mothers, his moment in the spotlight comes as a gay dad dealing with the processes of surrogacy as he and his partner look to have a baby of their own. Through wary narration and a few snarky quips, Ballard brings light to the fact that not all children have mommies, though they are loved all the more because of it. Later in the show, Ballard also plays a man whose divorce has led him to live with his aging mother. As his mother ages, Ballard’s character comes to face a concern that most children never dream about, becoming a parent to his own mother, whose memory problems and health concerns necessitate her son living with her.
Emily Talmadge in pink wraps up the show with a tender epilogue of a mother explaining the inconceivability of being a parent and birthing a child, and the moment when she realized that she was a mother. Talmadge describes the mental state of first-time mothers as they cope with the obstacles of pregnancy, and giving birth, finally realizing the undeniable truth that it was all worth it just to hold the newborn baby in her arms. The full cast gathers around Talmadge with children of their own, proclaiming with compassion that these little miracles truly are their babies.
In addition to the monologues, the show also features a handful of scenes with cast members working together to show comparisons between different parents in the same situations. The opening scene depicts three mothers in labor, each having different levels of experience with the process, yet all dealing with the same amount of pain and anxiety. Later on, during the first day of school, a dad is concerned that he can’t walk his daughter into the school, an overprotective mother can’t let go, while another mom is celebrating her first few hours of quiet since the child was born. The cast gives these different perspectives with aplomb, with some chuckles, as well as the realization of who our parents might have been on that day,
Frank, heartwarming, funny and devastating, Artistic Synergy of Baltimore’s Motherhood Out Loud is a joy to watch, and a great opportunity to spend an evening at the theatre with mom. It’s undeniably a mother of a production. Motherhood Out Loud at Artistic Synergy of Baltimore runs until May 18th. The show is approximately two hours, plus a fifteen-minute intermission. The show includes a content warning for persons twelve and up, due to adult language and content.
Running Time: Approximately 2 hours and 15 minutes with one intermission
Motherhood Out Loud plays through May 18th 2025 with Artistic Synergy of Baltimore at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church— 8212 Philadelphia Road in Rosedale, MD. Tickets are available at the door or in advance online.
