My play Water Closet was selected by the Orange County Playwrights Alliance “OCPA Studios” for an informal reading at the Hunger Artists Theatre Company on Saturday, May 26, 2012 at 2:00pm. I directed.

Profound

I casually mentioned to the cast, just before the house opened, that my parents would be in the audience. I also told them, while my mother has always been a good audience member at my several productions, I did not know how she would react to Water Closet, because she lived some of the dramatized events that take place in the play.

My mother, bless her heart, did drop a bomb during the Q&A session after the reading. She asked me, “Erica, was that about my mother?” She then gave the most moving anti-war speech I have ever witnessed. And she broke down and cried.

As a playwright, to be in some part the catalyst for such a cathartic experience for anyone, much less the most important woman in my life, fills me with so much emotion it’s hard for me to articulate my thoughts.

That my mother was moved enough to then share a personal story with a group of friends and strangers, something me, her daughter, had never heard before? Yes, it was truly a profound afternoon of theater for me.