About the Play:

My Mother#*!^%#! College Life is a full-length drama conceived by Jon Jory and edited by Brooke Jennett and Michael Bigelow Dixon. What's in the minds and hearts of college students today? In 40 monologues and a few dialogues, a multicultural ensemble questions everything they encounter: social justice and gender identity, self-awareness and relationship boundaries, future prospects and roommate etiquette. What emerges is a humorous and heartbreaking portrait of a new generation struggling with higher education's promise of "personal transformation."

My Mother#*!^%#! College Life is structured in three acts, beginning with matriculation and ending with graduation. The monologues in Act I, titled "Great Expectations," focus on encounters with new friends, financial aid, antidepressants, homework, sex, sleep deprivation and courses in physics and math. Act II, "Paradise Lost," features parties, budding and broken relationships, unexpected encounters with race and religion, sexual orientation and hitting rock bottom. Act III, "Metamorphoses," portrays students emerging from four years of challenge and change with surprising insights, political convictions and plans for a scary, uncertain future. The mixture of serious and comedic monologues captures the extreme difficulty – sometimes absurd and at other times overwhelming – of self-discovery and community-building. While the monologues convey the sense that students often feel alone in their quest for great success or simply survival, the ensemble itself presents a very different truth – at least they're alone together.

My Mother#*!^%#! College Life premiered in 2017 at Transylvania University's Lucille Little Theater in Lexington, Kentucky. The play has been performed in college theatre productions.

Cast: 3 to 5 women, 3 to 5 men (alternate casting 2 to 10 either gender)

About the Playwright:

Jon Jory was the founding artistic director of Long Wharf Theatre and producing director at Actors Theatre of Louisville for more than thirty years. He has directed on and Off-Broadway and at many regional theatres.

Brooke Jennett had the honor of being selected as the Dramatists Guild's 2016 young playwright of the year. My Mother*!^%#! College Life is her editorial debut.

Michael Bigelow Dixon is a director, playwright and dramaturg. He taught in the Theater Program at Transylvania University, and has edited 35 volumes of plays and criticism. He has worked on staff at Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Guthrie Theater and the Playwrights' Center; been a theatre fellow at the National Endowment for the Arts; and directed new plays at theatres from Florida to Minnesota and New York to California.