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.

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.

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.

Rachel Chavkin with her infant son, Sam, during a rehearsal of HADESTOWN

PHOTO Amber Gray c/o Rachel Chavkin

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.

Liza Gennaro with her daughter, Fiona, on a lunch break from rehearsing THE SECRET GARDEN at Pittsburgh CLO

PHOTO c/o Liza Gennaro

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:

Rachel is quick to acknowledge that having two lead producers who are both mothers— Mara Isaacs and Dale Franzen—has played a role in facilitating the ease with which her newborn has been incorporated into her professional life. Because of COVID-19 and Sam’s unvaccinated status as a newborn, he couldn’t join her in the rehearsal room, but the producers got Sam and a childminder an adjacent studio at Open Jar Studios so Rachel could visit him on breaks, and Rachel suspected that in a COVID-less world, Sam would have been welcome by her side through the entire process. Of course, Rachel is at the top of her field and not everyone has that kind of access and support. But as directors and choreographers, we know the importance of visual symbols and metaphors. If only in that regard, Rachel wearing her baby in the pages of the Times is a radical and hopeful symbol of what could come.

AND ALSO. There is so much more to do.

So what can we, as a community, do to help?

The big thing, or at least the easiest thing, is to do like Rachel, and “wear your baby.” Not literally (though perhaps, if that feels right to you), but in intention.

I have just reached an age where for the first time in my life I have friends and peers who are either pregnant or new mothers. And a conversation I’ve had with so many of them is whether or not we will try to hide this news. Many a congratulatory phone call has been buffered with, “Please keep this quiet—I still want to be up for jobs.”

Though decades have passed since Liza quietly ushered Fiona out of a Broadway house during tech, 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. This is already happening! But there is still work to be done to solidify it as the rule and not the exception. For my part—though a deep, welltrained part of my brain continues to ask, “Will they still want to hire me if I bring this up?”—I vow to be obnoxiously consistent in asking for accommodations for my family and child when I negotiate contracts, to bring Cora to rehearsal when it’s safe to do so, and to have both evidence of my career and my child on my social media and other Googleable accounts. The goal here feels clear: 10 years from now, I want my current students to take these same actions without the whisper of “Will I risk my job for this?” in their ear.

Chloe Treat nursing her three-month-old daughter, Cora, during a Zoom production meeting

PHOTO c/o Chloe Treat

The second, bigger ask is for an industry that makes allowances for all the ways in which our society at large fails us as mothers. There will be moments when our childcare falls through or our babies are sick (or, for that matter, when any other number of human needs that don’t have to do with child bearing or rearing interfere with rehearsal). Our theatres, producers, and creative teams need to plan for this. That means covering workers on both sides of the table with swings and understudies and associates who are ready to step in when people have to step out. It also means genuinely not judging a person’s professional ability or commitment when they, for example, need to bring their child to tech. We can and should have plans in place to support these inevitable human needs when they arise.

The final ask is not of the industry—it is my own, but I couldn’t write this piece without giving it voice.

Will I be able to make meaningful work as a director and have a meaningful relationship with my daughter? I’m just not sure. “Meaningful” looks different for different people but for me, that commitment is large. I don’t know how I would choose between the two. The fulfillment and joy I feel while running a room are paralleled only by the fulfillment and joy I feel while I’m with my daughter. Both have come to feel like nonnegotiable aspects of my identity. But while love isn’t finite, time is. And I haven’t even broached the subject of money. In short, there’s a lot to contend with and I just don’t know if it’s possible.

I am full of fear right now. Fear of who I will let down or what I will give up. But I am comforted by the thinking of Virginia Woolf when she said, “The future is dark, which is on the whole the best thing the future can be, I think.” Which is to say, I don’t know how any of this will play out. And that means there is the possibility, however unlikely, that it might play out splendidly. For myself, for my Cora, and for all the other parents who may attempt this down the line, that is the world I am working toward.

Chloe Treat is a director and choreographer of big-ass musicals.