A Belated Happy Mother’s Day from Expand the Canon!
Being a mother is complex, nuanced, rewarding, and difficult. Take a closer look at two ETC playwrights and how their work tackled motherhood: Alice Childress and Sylvia Plath.
Florence by Alice Childress
Motherhood and protection in the face of your daughter’s struggles and a system stacked against her.
Mama is sure that she should bring her daughter, a struggling actress named Florence, home from New York. While waiting in the train station, she meets jaded white actress and, though first seeming to help, it becomes clear she thinks nothing of Florence’s prospects –– and Mama has to decide if she'll support or deny her daughter.
A snapshot of Black dreams and pride in the time period after The Civil War but before the Civil Rights Movement.
PORTER: Whatever happened don’t you fret none. Life is too short
MAMA: Oh, I’m gonna fret plenty! You know what I wrote Florence?
PORTER: No, mam. But you don’t have to tell me.
MAMA: I said, “Keep trying.”
Three Women by Sylvia Plath
Three contrasting perspectives on womanhood, motherhood, and childbirth.
Told through poetic language, this play (originally intended for radio) is told through the voices of three pregnant characters: an eagerly expectant mother, a woman going through a miscarriage, and a student who becomes pregnant without intention.
“How long can I be a wall around my green property?
How long can my hands
Be a bandage to his hurt, and my words
Bright birds in the sky, consoling, consoling?
It is a terrible thing
To be so open: it is as if my heart
Put on a face and walked into the world.“
Learn More about the plays and read the full text of Three Women with a subscription to Expand the Canon (just $25/year!)
The Mannequin by Germaine de Staël with We Happy Few
🗓 May 22 - June 6
📍 Washington, DC
Enjoy an Expand the Canon lead talk back with former Artistic Director Mary Candler!
LATER THIS YEAR: The Verge by Susan Glaspell with Fiasco Theater Company
October 22 - November 27, 2026
Directed by Fiasco Artist Director Jessie Austrian, featuring Tony Award winner Mariam Silverman. Performed at The Public’s LuEster Hall.
