Mom’s the Word 2: Unhinged

By Jill Daum & Alison Kelly & Robin Nichol & Barbara Pollard & Deborah Williams

The Moms (Jill Daum, Alison Kelly, Robin Nichol, Barbara Pollard and Deborah Williams) tackle trickier tests and raging hormones with intense humour, bringing everyone back into the fray of the world’s oldest unpaid profession.

Mom’s the Word 2 – Unhinged rides the same rollercoaster of emotions of everyday life with teens, poking fun at everything from trying to referee warring siblings to unfortunate experiments with alcohol and that awkward first talk about the birds, the bees, and latex. With sometimes painful honesty, the Moms also face head-on the issues of aging, the spectre of cancer, and marriage upheavals. And don’t worry if you haven’t seen the first Mom’s the Word  – or if you aren’t a mom. You’ll still find that you only relate to EVERYTHING!  Anyone who has ever been, or currently has, once had or plans ever to have teenagers must see this show for the horrific, joyful, absurd and often hilarious truths it tells about parenthood.

The Birth

When we first started the Mom’s the Word project…let’s face it, it was an excuse to get out of the house once a week. We spent our entire budget on babysitting.  As our first performance loomed our expectations were not very high – we figured as long as our audience was other moms with kids the same age as ours they’d at least know what we were talking about, but everyone else would surely find this a great big bore.  We were prepared for a short run and a quick return to “normal” life.  Instead, we were greeted by an amazing outpouring from everyone in our audiences – understanding, connection, sympathy and laughter – a whole lot of laughter.  And success.

Mom’s the Word turned into a giant snowball rolling down a hill with us chasing behind it.  We adapted, sometimes quickly and sometimes not, but we eventually turned ourselves into a business, and we became that most rare of entities – a Canadian Theatrical Success, and THEN a Canadian International Theatrical Success.  What started out as the plain unvarnished truth of our personal lives became something to be discussed and dissected in a rehearsal hall, sometimes in languages we didn’t understand.

We were occasionally asked to make changes – to cut, to add, to make things funnier.  In other countries some things didn’t make sense, and some jokes didn’t work. We found that even the title only really worked in Canada because we spell it “mom” but we pronounce it “mum”.  The best decision we ever made was always to cast actors who were mothers themselves.  They knew what we were talking about, and they knew their own audience and their own community.  They never steered us wrong.

10 years went by amazingly quickly.  We all went on to other projects, sometimes even other professions, but we always stayed in touch as friends as well as business partners.  And these kids!  Half of them are taller than half of us.  We look at them now and we think…those first couple of years were a PIECE OF CAKE!  What did we have to worry about?  Keeping them alive!?  How hard was that compared to what we’re dealing with now?

So it seemed like a good time to start writing again.  Actually none of us had stopped, so it seemed like a good idea to think about a new show.   Sequels are scary.  You’re either too much like the first one, not enough like the first one or just not as good as the first one.   We decided to compare ourselves to ourselves as little as humanly possible, and we decided that our best bet was to stick to the original spirit of Mom’s the Word – tell the truth no matter how humiliating.   So far, so good.