Night, Mother

’Night, Mother by Marsha Norman opened on Broadway in 1983, earning the Tony Award for Best Play and the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The play takes place in real time, with no intermission or breaks in the action, to depict the unrelenting emotional exchange between Thelma and her daughter, Jessie, after Jessie announces that she plans to commit suicide. As Jessie sets her affairs in order, Thelma tries unsuccessfully to stop Jessie’s plan from hurtling toward its conclusion. Norman employs conventions of naturalism, an avant-garde movement beginning in the late 19th century. In this theatrical style, artists endeavored to find truth by depicting realistic life for audiences to observe scientifically and thereby better understand the nature of cause and effect.

When the play premiered in the early 1980s, depression and suicide were poorly understood. Modern antidepressants didn’t come into use until later in the decade, and the stigma of mental illness presented—and continues to present—a barrier to open dialogue. The act of suicide is usually shocking and unexpected, leaving loved ones plagued by doubts, blame, and unanswered questions: Why did they do it? What didn’t I know? How could I have intervened? ’Night, Mother begins with Jessie’s announcement that she’s suicidal and then—through her interaction with her mother—attempts to break open those questions.