In the aftermath of a crisis within her blended family, a stepmother weighs up her choices, past, present, and future. Fragment by fragment, she pieces together her story, with the honesty of a woman with everything to lose and everything to gain. Using words as a mirror, she tries to see herself as she is, not in the eyes of the society around her, but in the eyes of those who love her and who she loves.

La belle-mère / The Stepmother offers a complete re-reading of the stepmother archetype, a subject of the collective Western imagination for centuries. The challenges, duties, responsibilities, stakes, and freedoms of the role are weighed and analyzed without complacency, in this dynamic suite of narrative poems. The show will be performed in French, with English subtitles, by the co-authors themselves, Amélie Prévost and Rachel McCrum.

Join us as four writers share what we don’t always see on the page. From a day in the life of troubled residents, hope amidst capitalism and climate change denial, and the failures of medical paternalism, these are some of the many themes that inform these four astounding works.