I'm Mom at The PIT Mainstage

I'm Mom is a one-man show written and performed by Nate Wise, where therapy, acting, and comedy collide in a raw reckoning with grief. Wise's mother was a Chicago therapist and Dean of a PhD social work program who died of breast cancer when he was 18, never once admitting she was dying. Using Gestalt therapy's empty-chair technique alongside his acting training and his late mother's personal journals, Wise stages a live therapy session to voice the conversations they never had about her illness, her silence, and the grief she left behind. Blending clown comedy, therapy, and acting technique, the show traces the parallel between acting and therapy, both powered by vulnerability and the act of inhabiting another person's inner life.