←Recommendations of Mothers

Moench is making huge waves with her bold, unapologetic, and structure-shattering plays, almost always centering the experiences of women of color. Her plays utilize an element of surrealness that brings the severity of the plot to a heightened level, made digestible in its horror by her choices in nonrealism. She is masterful at building dynamic groups of characters who must all interact at once, something which can be very hard in larger casts that spend a lot of time onstage all together. Mothers in particular is a triumph in form, narrative, and emotional impact.

The funniest and most accurate capture of the competitive nature of motherhood that takes the war to hilarious heights. Well done!

MOTHERS shook me to my very core. The world Moench has constructed (the reversal of the racial hierarchy, the playful absurdity of teddy bears as human children, the obscurity of this society's decline into dystopia) is one of the most unique and compelling I've ever read. I love that we're not given all the answers and are trusted to put many of the pieces of this puzzle together ourselves. I love the strong, messy, flawed women that make up this alternate reality. I love love love this play.

Just wow! Ever since seeing this performed at the 2018 Kennedy Center MFA Workshop, this piece has haunted me in all the best ways possible! Upon rereading it, it's even better than I remember. Moench has created something marvelously terrifying with this well-written piece. The beginning made me giggle. The twists left my mouth agape. The ending left me in a state of shock with a broken heart. Please, please, read this play and enjoy every second sinking your teeth into it.

On the page, this is absolutely horrifying and yet all too plausible. I loved the playful twists and turns...and then the not so playful twists and turns. This is a play that I would love to see different interpretations of, having already seen the one at Playwrights Realm.

Moench has created such a fascinating, bleak world in MOTHERS. The first act contains such amazing microaggressions and snideness (I can just imagine sitting in an audience and hearing everyone around me going "oooo" at so many of the lines), and then the second act is relentlessly Sarah Kane-esque. It not only shows the playwright's range, but her deftness at making the two acts flow so well together and reveal the shifts in power along racial and gender lines. I highly recommend giving it a read and I hope I get to see a production one day!

The biting hilarity of act one was the perfect set up to the gutting denouement in act two. Moench creates a super distinct and well-defined world in this piece while only giving us a small cross-section of society--so incredibly impressive! What we don't know of the redefined world in act two is tons more evocative and haunting, I believe, than if we were taken outside the walls of the meetup space. Supremely theatrical, well-paced, consistently surprising, and wholly original. I hope to see this produced some day soon!

Mothers imagines a near-future world wear parenthood is no less terrifying than today. It leaves you questioning how you would behave in these given circumstances and perhaps questioning (if you are a mother or parent) how you do behave now. This is a fantastically smart play that will leave remnants on your mind for days after.

Mothers dares to tell the truth about the real experience of mothering and what a vicious competitive racist sexist classist war it is, and it does so in a brilliantly engaging way that exposes the horror bit by anxious bit. Read it! Produce it! And know that little by little women are beginning to fill in the blanks left by the patriarchal system of female erasure - we will be known!

I saw this performed at the 2018 Kennedy Center MFA Workshop. I was floored, excited, inspired by the twist in this play! What starts as a sardonic comedy with commentary on the modern-day meaning of motherhood in a domestic sense, descends into a raw, horrifyingly natural (and visceral) exploration of motherhood. I don't want to give away spoilers, but pay close attention to that hamster story toward the beginning of the play. I cannot wait to see this play again!