The 11th Annual Malibu Public Library Speakers Series celebrates women who create laughter.
By Melonie Magruder / Special to The Malibu Times
The Malibu Public Library’s 11th Annual Saturday Speakers Series, honoring Women’s History Month, almost didn’t happen this year. Program director Kathleen Sullivan was recovering from the loss of her mother last September and a debilitating illness that carried through December.
“I just didn’t think I could handle it this year,” Sullivan said.
Fortune stepped in and the speaker series this month will feature two women who have a great deal to say about the journey of the American woman, with performances March 7 by comedienne Amy Simon and March 14 by series’ alumnus Kres Mersky.
“Someone had told Amy Simon about our series and she just called me out of the blue,” Sullivan said. “Which was good, because I was thinking that, with One Book, One City-Malibu coming up in April, I wouldn’t have time to organize anything. Now, we have Amy performing the longest running, one-woman play in Los Angeles.”
That would be Simon’s self-penned “Cheerios in My Underwear and Other True Tales of Motherhood,” which first opened in 2003 at the Lillian Theatre in Hollywood. Written during a child-free weekend at a luxury hotel (the prize for winning an Easter egg hunt), Simon found that a little time away from diapers and carpool duty was enough to inspire a treatise on the joys and travails of motherhood.
“This piece evolved out of my experiences as a stay-at-home mom,” Simon said in an interview with The Malibu Times. “The title comes from a long plane trip that I took with my two daughters. When I got home and took off my clothes, Cheerios fell out from everywhere.”
Mothers will recognize this phenomenon as something perfectly normal, of course. In writing her solo play, Simon only had to plumb her daily life to find hilarious tales of PMS (Perfect Mother Syndrome), Barbie and a survey of television moms from Donna Reed to Sharon Osbourne.
“I actually do a bit in the play where I become Donna Reed on stage and bake cupcakes in a toaster oven to serve to the audience,” Simon, who resembles a harassed-looking Holly Hunter, said. “Moms multitask, right? There’s a running theme of assault on the senses with noise and toys going everywhere. And I have a line where I say, ‘I yearn for the ’50s, when many moms were repressed, tapped out, sedated, pill-popping alcoholics in denial. But it was fun!'”
Simon insists her piece is not a “man bashing” play, but celebrates the unacknowledged heroism of lonely, unacknowledged, stay-at-home mothers.
“I don’t whine in this play,” she said. “But a lot of men don’t get how noble motherhood is. I interviewed Marc Cherry, the creator of ‘Desperate Housewives,’ and he told me about watching the news one day with his own mother. A woman had snapped and killed her whole family. Marc said, ‘I don’t know how a mother could do that.’ His mom just said, ‘I do.”
Simon was a New York actress and taught improvisation before she came to Los Angeles and got a job working with a large music company. The true plight of working women was illustrated when, after several years of top performance reviews, she got pregnant-and was fired.
Simon sued and the company settled. During the next year she received dozens of calls from women working within the industry, thanking her for taking on what she calls a business of entrenched misogyny.
‘”Cheerios’ is about women’s roles around the world,” Simon, who is now writing about women’s history, said. “We do it all. Guys think they’re great because they can figure out a $50,000 budget. But just try and figure out how to fold up a stroller.”
Actress and writer Kres Mersky has performed several times for the speaker series, with her last incarnation being the dancer Isadora Duncan. She said that her self-penned piece, “Poland and Other Short Pieces,” is not so much about that country as an absurdist play on words, along the lines of such playwrights as Samuel Beckett or David Ives.
“It’s perfect for the library because this piece is a play on how we take words so literally,” Mersky said. “Hopefully it’s funny and makes you think about what words really mean.”
Mersky’s works feature mostly contemporary women in today’s world of struggle, a symbol of the personal solitude endemic in our culture.
“I have one piece, ‘Scuffy the Cat,’ told from the point of view of a cat who wants to go off on his own and feels the need to reassure his owner that it’s OK,” Mersky said. “We all deal with a certain solitude in life.
“Kathy is offering a wonderful thing with this series,” Mersky said about the series. “She wants to make a statement about women’s history and support women writers.”
Amy Simon performs “Cheerios in My Underwear” March 7, 3 p.m., at the Malibu Public Library. Kres Mersky performs “Poland and Other Short Pieces” March 14 at 3 p.m. More information can be obtained by calling 310.456.6438.