MOTHERS AT
WORK BY CHLOE
TREAT
In the fall before the pandemic, which also happened to be the fall I got pregnant, I directed and choreographed six musicals in six months. This breakneck pace was not necessarily something I would have chosen, but rather a necessity of trying to make a living freelance directing at whatever rung on the career ladder I’m on now. That said, I genuinely loved every minute of my jam-packed season. And when a pregnancy test came back positive, I sat in the back of many dark theatres watching a run of a show I directed, feeling wildly full with all the things I was making.
The plan was always to be a working mom. I was going to be an associate director on a show at Encores! that opened two weeks before my due date, and then fly to Austria with my newborn six weeks postpartum to direct a show there. And then, early in my second trimester, there was news out of Wuhan about a new virus. A few weeks later, I lost all of my work for the next six months and, well, you know the rest… For the first year and a half of my daughter’s life, I was given a gift that I never asked for. The pandemic allowed me to take time with Cora without giving up a single job. Don’t get me wrong—being a full-time mother was neither intuitive nor easy for me. So much of my identity is tied to my work as a director, and I often felt unmoored without that anchor. But having made it through that season, I am so very grateful for it. As this new year begins, I am standing on the precipice of my first big jobs back, both postpartum and post-pandemic. Before me are, once again, six months of pretty much nonstop work, with some of the biggest and most exciting jobs I’ve ever had. Before Cora was born, I would have been so thrilled about my coming season, and I am—but truth be told, I’m also terrified. I do not know if I’m capable of giving my daughter the attention and energy that I want her to receive, while also juggling my professional ambitions and responsibilities. But I have reason to hope.
Chloe Treat nursing her three-month-old daughter, Cora, during a Zoom production meeting PHOTO c/o Chloe Treat
The thing that prompted me to write about directing and motherhood in the first place is an anecdote involving two of my mentors. This past fall I was running auditions at Manhattan School of Music, where Liza Gennaro is the Associate Dean and Director of Musical Theatre. We hadn’t seen each other since I’d had Cora, and we were catching up before auditions began. She mentioned that she’d just read an article in the New York Times about Broadway’s reopening, and had seen a picture of Rachel Chavkin wearing her son, Sam, in a baby carrier while working on Hadestown.
The idea that being “caught in the act” of motherhood will make you ineligible for work can only be shifted by seeing, all around us, mothers at work. Liza was moved by that photo because when her daughter, Fiona (now my age-ish), was small, she remembers how important it felt to conceal her. “I was always trying to hide the fact that I had a child in tow,” she said. Liza recalls being torn between motherhood and professional responsibilities during the early months of Fiona’s life, a strain I suspect could be echoed by most mothers across most industries. However, unique to theatre are the often long and erratic hours which make finding reliable childcare difficult. One breaking point occurred when, after childcare fell through while working on a Broadway show in which tensions were already high, Liza had no choice but to bring her twoyear-old to the theatre during tech. She remembers the urgency she felt to get Fiona out of there as fast as she could. This incident served as a message to Liza, encouraging her to limit her freelance career and find more stable work where she felt she could do justice by both her daughter and her professional responsibilities. And it must be said that she has done so brilliantly and has built an extraordinary life and career for herself. But still, it was a choice she felt she had to make. So when Liza saw our industry celebrating Rachel for wearing her baby while working on a Broadway show, she felt hopeful for the next generation of working mothers. That’s what she told me as we waited for auditions to begin, and I spent the rest of the day thinking about it. I have since spoken more with both women. Here’s what I learned:
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