Motherhood & Other Shi**y Responsibilities at 28th Street Theater

ABOUT THE SHOW: A mother opens Pandora’s Box while unpacking her life. Inside: old headshots, faded programs, fragments of the performer she used to be. And a note in her own handwriting: “It’s all okay now.” It isn’t.

In this darkly comic solo excavation, Venessa M. Diaz unearths a lifetime of mystical knowing she was taught to suppress: childhood premonitions that came true, divine interventions she dismissed, prophetic dreams she couldn’t explain. From a transformative journey to Egypt to a supernatural encounter with Jeff Goldblum, from going toe-to-toe with God to accepting the gift of twin sons with Down syndrome and guided at every turn by the high priestess wisdom of Chaka Khan, she has always heard the voice. She just never listened to her own.

When her singing voice is paralyzed, the gift that once meant freedom becomes a phantom. What remains is a woman trapped in a life built for everyone but herself, suffocating under the weight of who she’s pretended to be. Motherhood… is a reckoning with silence, sacrifice and the lies women tell themselves to survive.

ABOUT THE ARTIST: Venessa M. Diaz is a multidisciplinary writer, performer, filmmaker, and advocate working across television, theater and film. Her credits and affiliations include Disney Jr., PBS Kids, Netflix, and Sesame Workshop Writers Room. She is a finalist for the Public Theater EWG fellowship and an alumna of the NHMC Television Writers Program. As a playwright her solo show Organic Sofrito or Other Recipes for Disaster was a bestseller at the United Solo Theater Festival and played for audiences throughout New York and Chicago.