Just before the pandemic hit, actors Daniel Daigle and Sara Heifetz met while working on a staged reading of a new play. They immediately hit it off.
“She was like, ‘I am your Richmond theater mother. I am going to take care of you. You are under my wing,’” Daigle recalls Heifetz saying.
Now the actors are bringing that dynamic to the stage with Richmond Triangle Players’ “Conversations with Mother.” Written by playwright Matthew Lombardo, the show dramatizes a relationship between an Italian American mother named Maria and her gay son Bobby.
Daigle, who plays Bobby in the show, sees plenty of overlap with his own life.
“I also come from an Italian American family and I’m also the gay son in my family,” Daigle says. “Bobby is a lot like me in some ways. He’s very much a momma’s boy, and I am the same. I talk to my mom almost every day, and so does Bobby.”
The non-linear play bounces between five decades of a relationship between a mother and her son.
“It all started because Matthew Lombardo had this really amazing relationship with his mother,” explains Deejay Gray, the show’s director. “It’s semi-autobiographical. He would post on Facebook all these outrageous conversations he was having.”
As fans kept asking Lombardo about his mother, he decided to turn their dynamic into a play.
“It’s ultimately about how we celebrate the people who take care of us, show up for us, whether that’s a mother or another parental figure or friends or chosen family,” Gray says. “It’s a really great testament to the people who affect us and turn us into the people that we are. It’s ultimately a series of conversations between a gay son and his mother over five decades.”
In many ways, Bobby is a stereotypical troubled artist.
“He’s got so many feelings and he doesn’t know how to express them all. He really cares deeply about so many different things and especially about his relationship with his mother,” Daigle says. “What’s neat about the play is how we progress through time. It’s not one singular moment in this relationship between mother and son. It’s a long series of moments from the entirely of the son’s life.”
Heifetz, who plays Maria, says the show explores heavy themes without losing its sense of humor.
“It is a hilarious and beautiful story about a mother and her son and it will make you laugh and punch you in gut at the same time,” she says.
Heifetz says that Maria is “an absolutely fierce momma bear” who’s “not going to let anything or anyone hurt her kid.”
“She is larger than life,” Heifetz explains. “It’s her way of taking the sting out of things, the bigness and the humor. She is so pleased with herself and how funny she is and how big and brash she is.”
In the show, Bobby’s sexual orientation isn’t a point of contention between Bobby and his mother.
“It’s not a struggle of acceptance kind of thing,” Heifetz says. “That is just who he is and she loves it. It’s about all the other life struggles when you’re trying to be a human and you’re growing up. How do you love someone into loving themselves and being the best version of themselves that they can be?”
“Conversations with Mother” is Richmond Triangle Players’ season replacement for “Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors.” The previously scheduled show was set to star Adam Turck before he was tragically killed in August while intervening in a domestic dispute. Gray, who was also set to direct the “Dracula” show, says he was relieved that RTP decided to change shows.
“[Turck] and I just had a singular experience working together, so we have found some beautiful ways to bring him into the play and give folks an opportunity to think about something else when they come to this,” says Gray, who starred opposite Turck in 2022’s “The Inheritance” at Richmond Triangle Players. “Conversations with Mother” is “ultimately a play about how to celebrate the people that we love. In a lot of ways, it is a great show to dedicate to him.”
Though “Conversations with Mother” deals with weighty topics like substance abuse and abusive relationships, Heifetz says most of the more dramatic moments happen off stage, and that it’s more about how people pick themselves up after the fact.
“There’s something really amazing about life that happens in the spaces in between,” Heifetz says. “It’s never the big moments. It’s what you do in the moment after to get up again, and who’s helping you up.”
“Conversations with Mother” runs Sept. 10-Oct. 4 at Richmond Triangle Players, 1300 Altamont Ave. For more information visit rtriangle.org or call 804-346-8113.
