Pittsburgh - Yo’ Mama! a provocative new comedy about modern motherhood, opened to sold out crowds at last summer’s Three Rivers Arts Festival. Because of the strong audience response to this debut production by local playwright, Heather Arnet, the Center for Creative Play will present a return engagement of Yo’Mama! from April 29th through May 15th in their performance space located at 1400 S. Braddock Avenue in Regent Square.

Starring in this new production are Adrienne Wehr (local actress and Producer of The Bread My Sweet) and Melissa Martin (Screenwriter/Director of The Bread My Sweet). The cast also features Janis Burley Wilson, Carla Delaney, Vanessa German, and Tonia Steed as six very funny and very sexy new mothers in a post-natal yoga class.

Wehr met Arnet back in the early nineties when they were both working on Mister Rogers Neighborhood. The two stayed in touch over the years and have been searching for a creative project to collaborate on ever since. Martin was in the original Yo’ Mama! cast at the Arts Festival. “Melissa and I began our journey with THE BREAD, MY SWEET while working on one of her stage plays at the Toronto Fringe Festival. It's an honor for us to return to the stage together in Heather's gemstone of a play, while at the same time we are in development for our next feature film. The timing feels most wonderfully fortuitous!" said Wehr.

“The Bread My Sweet was so beloved by Pittsburgh audiences, it will be thrilling for them to see the film’s creators on stage performing together.” Continued Arnet. “What a rare treat.”

"I am thrilled to be returning to Yo’ Mama! Because I love the subject matter. It grapples with the balancing act of being mom and artist. Something I can completely relate to and something I had not seen explored before on stage,” remarked Melissa Martin whose character, like herself, is a mom struggling to find time to write. “But it is also exciting because Adrienne and I have never performed together and that should be a blast.”

Yo’Mama!, written and directed by Arnet after the birth of her son, includes choreography by Mary Miller and is set in a post-natal yoga class where women share honest, humorous, and irreverent tales of parenthood as they move continuously in and out of yoga postures. As the Center for Creative Play is a familiar destination to parents and as its downstairs neighbor is Fitness Yoga – the play is easily at home in its new location. In addition to new cast members, the play also includes new music and dance sequences and some minor rewrites so Arnet encourages those who were able to see it at Three Rivers Arts Festival to come see the show again.

YO’ Mama! runs April 29 – May 15, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 2pm. Tickets are $15. For reservations call ProArts ticketing at 412-394-3353 or visit www.proartstickets.org. For more information about the play and artists involved visit www.yomamatheplay.com

Yo’ Mama! is supported in part by a Seed Award from The Sprout Fund and through a grant from the Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts program of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts (PCA), a state agency. It is funded by citizens of Pennsylvania through an annual legislative appropriation, and administered locally by ProArts. The PCA is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.

About Yo’ Mama!

Yo' Mama! written by Heather Arnet, premiered at Three Rivers Arts Festival in Pittsburgh, PA in June 2003. Because of its sell out success at the festival it received two grants, one from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the other from the Sprout Fund, to launch another production in Pittsburgh in April/May 2004. After the spring production, Arnet will be taking Yo' Mama! national. The long-range plan is to have a reading or production seeded in every state in the United States for Mother's Day 2005. Each local producer will be asked to select a local (or national) non-profit organization whose mission is to enhance the lives of women or girls, to receive a percentage of proceeds from box office sales. The goal of Yo' Mama! is to entertain but also to pay tribute to the diverse women who call themselves mothers. Before we were mothers we were women with desires, and goals, and passions. And now that we are mothers we still are! The play presents women who are funny, career driven, sexy, witty, strong, and they also all happen to be moms too. It is our goal to bring this message to women (and men) all over the country so as to broaden our definition of who mothers are and what they can dream about and desire and become. We also hope to provide a much cooler Mother’s Day option than brunch, flowers, or cards.

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