S03|23 - Moms the Musical with Kelly Surette

Kelly Surette is the creator (Book/Music/Lyrics) of ‘Moms: The Musical’. Moms had its NYC workshop premiere at Ripley Grier Studios on July 24, 2021 (directed by two-time Drama-Desk nominee Victoria Rae Sook and music directed by Broadway/Off-Broadway music director David John Madore.) Moms has been featured on Broadway Profiles hosted by 12-time Emmy Award Winner Tamsen Fadal, Broadway World, Stage Right Secrets, Northshore Magazine, The Hartford Courant, Front Row Center, Blog Talk Radio, Rye The News Guy, and Times Square Chronicles.

Ms. Surette was a B.F.A. candidate in musical theater at The Boston Conservatory for three years and received her Bachelor of Arts in Theater from Merrimack College. She holds a Master of Science in Music Industry Leadership from Northeastern University with a concentration in Entrepreneurship. Ms. Surette is

the author of the book Creative Miracles: A Practitioner’s Guide to Adaptive Music Instruction and is a contributing author to Her Bada** Story with Align Yourself Inc. Publishing

Watch the NYC Workshop Premiere by clicking here! Watch Moms on Broadway Profiles by clicking here. 

 IG: @officialmomsthemusical
Website: https://www.moms-themusical.com/

What we talk about today:

• How theater can be a great teaching tool
• Kelly’s idea to bring motherhood + women to the forefront in musical theatre
• How “not being good enough” is a common motherhood theme
• The importance of friendships as moms

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Episode Transcript

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Hey, I'm Crystal, a certified life coach and mom of four. In this podcast, we combine radical connection and positive parenting theories with the How-To Life Coaching Tools and Mindset Work to completely transform our relationship with our children.

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Kelly Surette background, and what she does

Hi, I'm excited to bring you today's podcast episode, Moms the Musical with Kelly Surette.

Kelly Surette is the creator of 'Moms: The Musical'. Moms has been featured on Broadway Profiles hosted by 12-time Emmy Award Winner Tamsen Fadal, Broadway World, Stage Right Secrets, Northshore Magazine, The Hartford Courant, Front Row Center, Blog Talk Radio, Rye The News Guy, and Times Square Chronicles.

She is a B.F.A. candidate in musical theater, and at The Boston Conservatory for three years and received her Bachelor of Arts in Theater from Merrimack College. She also holds a Master of Science in Music Industry Leadership from Northeastern University with a concentration in Entrepreneurship. 

Hi, Kelly. I am so excited to talk to you today.

 

Kelly Surette: I'm thrilled to be here. This is awesome. I'm so excited.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Hey, me too, because we've been trying to make this work for a while and our schedules were just not in alignment. So, we are-- We are double excited to have this conversation. 

Kelly reached out to me, or somebody on her team reached out to me via email a while ago and told me about this amazing musical that she was putting on, and I was really interested in it because it had all to do with motherhood. It's called 'Moms: The Musical'. 

So, she's going to talk to us all about that today. So, first off, tell us a little bit about you and your background before we dive into the musical.

 

Kelly Surette: Sure. So, I started in musical theater at a very, very young age, around five or six years old; and I've just sort of been in musical theater ever since. I went to The Boston Conservatory for Musical Theater, and even got a Music Business degree at one point. 

I've taught in Music Education quite a bit and taught Musical Theater. And I also should mention I'm a mother of two beautiful little girls; I have a five-year-old and a three-year-old, and they are in the other room. I've bribed them with chocolate, like, literally.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: But we'll see how that goes.

 

Kelly Surette: We'll see how that goes. But hey, I was like, 'This is a motherhood podcast, I think we can make it work.' But yeah, ever since COVID I've been home with my girls and working on Moms Musicals. So, it's been a-- It's been a great time. So, that's me in a nutshell.

 

How Moms the Musical got started

Crystal The Parenting Coach: It has been awesome. So, I was able to listen to some clips from it that got sent to me, which were awesome. So, I want you to tell us just a little bit about the musical and also how you came up with that idea. Like how did that whole process work for you?

 

Kelly Surette: Well, so let's first start with the sort of big picture of what the show is about. So, it is about two moms who are starkly different in their approach to motherhood. One of the moms is this career workaholic, and she really is struggling with-- She's really struggling with connecting to motherhood. 

She's really not taking to it naturally; it's a real challenge for her. She's sort of resisting it at every turn, and really struggling to define who she is as a mother and as a working mom. 

And our other mother is Mia, and she is just that mom we all sort of love to hate. She's that mom who makes her own baby food and is just perfect and always has, you know, every little thing you could possibly imagine that she needs in her diaper bag; and she's just like the all-around stay-at-home mom. 

But we learn that there's a little bit more to Mia, as she has a depth about her; she is struggling in her marriage, and having a child really changed and affected her marriage. So, it's sort of this first look at those like initial first three or four months where you're adapting to parenthood; and, at the same time, trying to figure out who you are. 

There's a mommy group chat in the show. Many moms are probably familiar with the Facebook mommy group chats; and the positives and the pitfalls of the mommy group chat is in the show. 

We have a mother-in-law character; she's a lot of fun. And the show really overall is just this sort of microcosm and exploration of the first few months of becoming a mother, and how we adapt and adjust to that.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Hey, and how did that idea, like how was it born? Like, what made you think that that would be what you really wanted to do?

 

Kelly Surette: Well, I think I was one of those moms. I was kind of the mom who didn't really take to motherhood as naturally as I thought I was going to. And I think that when that happened, I was expecting what everything in society tells you to expect is this; you're going to fall in love with your baby, and it's going to be this beautiful time in your life. 

And I just didn't experience it that way. And so, I, as a musical theater creator, always am thinking about, how can I take my life and turn that into some kind of art that's going to say something about the experiences that we have as human beings? 

And that's sort of where Moms was born. It was just kind of, I was looking at all these other moms and going, 'Oh my God, I can't live up to this.' And realizing that there was a subject in there to discover and to sing about and to dance about. 

And it's really not a subject in Musical Theater that's talked about a lot. I mean, once you hit 25 in Musical Theater, you don't really see a lot of those characters on stage. 

We don't have, you know, 35-year-old women who are moms in musical theater. So, I thought it was also time for that to happen. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah, I love that. 

 

Kelly Surette: You know, I felt like we needed it. I felt like Musical Theater needed a show like this.

 

How theater can be a great teaching tool

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yes. I love that you noticed like, 'This is what's missing, but then also I can tell my story through theater and through story.' I remember last time we talked, you said this great quote, and I can't remember what it was, but it was something about teaching through theater and teaching through story. Tell us a little bit more about that.

 

Kelly Surette: Yeah, I mean, I believe that we learn from art. I mean, this is how we can explore and learn about ourselves, and what we identify with and what we don't identify with. 

And I think my dream for moms isn't just for moms in the audience to see themselves, but for maybe their husbands to better understand their wives’ experience as mothers – or their partners to better understand their experience that, you know, all of the hormones and the physical aspects of becoming a mom kind of comes out of that. 

And I think that what better way to look at that fit through art and through fun and dance and expression. So, I believe that we can learn a lot from theater. I believe it is a teaching tool; and I hope that moms, opens up some minds and eyes. 

You know, you laugh and you cry; and I hope that it shows what the reality of the struggle is, rather than what society puts on us as moms.

 

The themes within Moms the Musical

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. I would love for you to tell us a little bit more about some of those struggles that you're just talking about now. Some of those themes that kind of come up within the musical that you have seen in yourself as a struggle or maybe around you as a struggle.

Because I think we all share in that, and I think sometimes we think like, 'We're alone in this – like, we're the only ones dealing with this,' when we're not. So, I would love to hear more about, about those themes.

 

How "not being good enough" is a common motherhood theme

Kelly Surette: Well, the first-- I mean, the first theme that comes to mind is "not being good enough"; not being good enough for your child, not being good enough for your husband or your partner, not being good enough for your friends – and just not being good enough. 

I think there's a lyric in the show where our main character literally just sits there and sing just with her whole heart, "I'm sorry, I'm not good enough for you." You know, and it's just this moment in the show where the whole show stops. 

And it's like, I think we all can relate to that so deeply as mothers; just never feeling like we're good enough, never feeling like we're stepping into the role in the way that we should – whether we're trying to be too perfect at it or we're failing at it; like, we're just never good enough. 

And I think that that's one of the main themes of the show that is an honest exploration of what we as moms feel.

 

The theme of mom-break Vs. mom-guilt

Another exploration in the show that I think is really interesting dynamic is sort of this feeling of like, wanting to be away from your kids, but not wanting to want to be away from them, if that makes sense. Like, I think that our main character really struggles with like, 'I want to be working, I want to be outside of the home, but I don't want to want to.' You know, she--

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Like, 'There's something wrong with me if I think that.'

 

Kelly Surette: Right. And it's a real struggle for her, and she just doesn't-- She feels so guilty and like there's something wrong with her that she doesn't want to be home in the way that she thinks she's supposed to. So, I think that's another theme that we explore. 

 

The theme of competition and perfection

And then, I think we explore competition and the push to be perfect. There's a song on this show called Pinterest Perfect. And it's all about, you know, how we compare and contrast ourselves through the world of social media. 

I think that, you know, one of the things that's different about our generation versus like say my mom's generation is that we have these, sort of, false friendships and strange relationships with other mothers through social media. 

We don't necessarily-- We have these group chats where we're sort of saying whatever we think and, you know, judging; and there's a lot of challenges, and there could also be a lot of support that comes from these group chats, you know? 

So, I think there's this exploration of, how does social media – how does technology affect the modern American mother and how do we navigate that? 

 

So those are a couple of the themes. There's many, many more in the show, but we definitely attack some of the biggest, I think, struggles that the modern American mother is facing – or any mother anywhere.

 

What Kelly Surette learned through her musical theater journey as a mom

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Wow. Yeah, definitely. I love that. I'm curious what you feel like you learned, so going through this process and kind of pulling out like, 'These are struggles that I see moms have all over the place, and like nobody's really talking about them, let's talk about them.' So, what's like, kind of, a learning experience you had as you were processing through this?

 

Kelly Surette: Well, I think I learned so much about myself. I think I was able to finally articulate through these characters how I was really feeling as a mom. And, in doing so, it was really cathartic for me to write it. 

I mean, I feel like I was being so honest with the characters that I was finally being honest with myself in so many ways. And I think that, you know, I learned so much from the experience of just putting those words on the page and seeing them in front of me and going, 'Oh my God, that's how I feel, that's how so many women feel.' 

And I think you know, in writing this show, it's a bit controversial in some ways because it's not just this funny-- It sounds fun like, 'Moms Musical, like, we're going to go laugh and watch some tap dancing.' It's so much more than that, and there's so much more to it. 

And I think that finally talking about these subjects has, you know, opened up my eyes to how many women are just like, 'Thank you for talking about that, thank you for bringing that up – I see myself in these characters, and I identify with that.' 

And I think we're starting to see a trend in that direction. And, you know, shows like Workin' Moms on Netflix, and things like that, but we need more of it. And theater, has just been living in the dark ages with so many men dominating the entertainment industry that it's time, you know, that women step up. And so, I think I've learned just how women need their voices represented as well.

 

The importance of friendships as moms

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah, definitely. Definitely, women and mothers. Last time we spoke, you talked a lot about friendships; and how friendships are woven into the musical, and how that was kind of a key theme – and also like a support for them. So, tell us a little bit about that.

 

Kelly Surette: Well, this friendship, in particular, that happens in the show is such an unexpected friendship because the two women come from such diverse backgrounds, have such different values; and really come from very different points in their lives, and have--  

You know, one of them comes from a very economically challenging background; and the other one comes from a little bit more of a privileged background. And so, they're really coming at each other from these very different places. 

And we just see how they learn to support each other, and grow through their friendship by accepting and embracing each other's differences, but also while pointing out like; one woman's weakness can be the other woman's strength – and together, they can kind of grow and change. 

And, you know, at the end of the show, there's still that like little bit of banter that they had at the beginning where they didn't quite mesh, but you see how those differences really brought them together and how their strength grows. 

And I think that we, as women, we need those 'mom support' friends. Like I have my own personal mommy group chat of two other women that I have spoken with since my babies were, you know, since I was pregnant. And those two women have done my lifeline. 

I mean, I don't think I could have gotten through two pregnancies and raising children in these early years without these two women. So, I think that the show really celebrates women, and celebrates how we can support and help each other on this journey rather than judge and harm each other on this journey, which we do see both of those things. And I think this show helps us to go in the other direction.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. I was just coaching a client the other day on play, how she was like, 'I feel like I need to play and enjoy playing, and I don't enjoy playing with my kids.' 

And, we can look at something like that and see somebody else that's really great at playing with their kids and feel like, 'Well, we should be more like that,' but maybe they're not as great with connecting – or maybe, you know, you're really good at house-managing. 

There's all these different strengths that we have, and we like to look at everyone else's strengths and think like, 'Oh, we should be more like that,' and only focus on our weaknesses. So, I love that you pulled that out of it. 

I also love the "not being good enough" theme; that is 100% the biggest theme that I see in coaching clients is like, so much of this inner critic – this inner shame and judgment – that we don't process or deal with. 

And also, friendships, I 100% agree with that. I think that that's been true in my life in the times that I was really struggling and really needed that. And I think that oftentimes we don't have that or don't allow ourselves to make those friendships for whatever reason. 

So, if you're listening to this, I think those are some really great tips working through our own "not good enough" stuff, our own inner shame, our own inner critic; and also relying on other people, and finding our own support system, and knowing that they need it just as much as we need it. And it's just going to be such a great and beautiful thing. Okay.

 

Kelly’s idea to bring motherhood + women to the forefront in musical theatre

Crystal The Parenting Coach: So, I love to ask people when we're coming to, kind of, the end of our conversation, if you feel like there's a mom that's struggling – so maybe she could kind of see herself in one of these characters that you described or one of these struggles that you brought up – what's something that you would tell her today, that you think would be helpful?

 

Kelly Surette: I would tell her that it's okay to want to have your individual identity as a woman and also be a mom; it's okay to have both and want both, and it's okay for those two things to come into, to one thing. 

Like, when we become-- We don't become a mom and then lose ourselves; you know, we don't—But we have to grow to meet motherhood where we, you know, we have to meet motherhood. So, we have to kind of redefine who we are once we become moms. 

I would just say that it's okay to want to discover who that new version of yourself is – and not only identify yourself as a mom to be willing to explore who you are now, and that that's okay too. And if you really identify with motherhood and that's who you feel like strongly, your bond is, that's okay too. Like, it's okay to look at where you're at and accept wherever you are.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: I love that. I think that is like seriously one of the key learnings in parenting that I've had and in motherhood that I've had. I think one of the ways that I describe it is like, identifying who we are outside of our roles, right? 

 

Kelly Surette: Yeah. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: So, motherhood is a role, and that can be something we can learn and grow at, you know, become better at; that's great. But there's also lots of different roles like, right; maybe we're a sister, maybe we're a partner. 

Like there's so many other roles that we have; and so, over-identifying with that one role and making it mean so much about us and losing us, that's why people feel like they're lost or stuck in motherhood, right? Because they give all of it thinking that they need to give themselves instead of figuring out who they are outside of that. 

So, I often tell people like, 'Let's figure out who you are outside of it – it doesn't mean you have to like drop motherhood, but who are you as a person?' And growing that self-identity can be huge to changing our parenting in our motherhood.

 

Kelly Surette: Absolutely. I mean, you said it way better than I did.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Excellent. I'm so glad you brought it up because I was like, 'This is-- like, this is it, this is everything, I love talking about that.' Okay. 

 

How to connect with Kelly Surette

Crystal The Parenting Coach: So, tell us more, I guess, about in ending, how people can listen to your musical or what are the next steps, how they can connect with you and see the future of this?

 

Kelly Surette: Sure. So, there is lots of exciting things happening for moms. I'm not totally allowed to give it all away. But we are moving forward with next steps for the project. And so, you can find us at on Instagram and @officialmomsthemusical.

Also, you can find us at www.officialmomsthemusical.com. And I believe our Facebook is also at officialmomsandmusicals, so you can find us in all those places. And definitely don't hesitate to reach out if you have any, you know, if you want to be in touch with me.

I mean, I would love to hear how this show is affecting your life. You can find us on SoundCloud. We do have a live version of the show, so it's a recording of all the live recordings from the workshop we did in New York City that you can check out on SoundCloud. So, find us.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Awesome.

 

Kelly Surette: Check it out and, you know, keep your eye on 'Moms: The Musical'.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: That sounds great. Thank you so much. And thank you for being here with us Kelly.

 

Kelly Surette: Thank you.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: I thought it would be super fun to show you a little clip of one of the songs. It was recorded in a workshop that they did and it is called A Wonder to Be a Mother. 

 

Moms the Musical: It’s a wonder to be a mother, the better side by side, thrilling to be mother, the better to be your guide, we could share clothes and shoes, and gossip about the music, on each other we’ll depend. It’s a wonder to be a mother, it’s better when you’ve got a friend.

Oh look, I'm never going be the type of friend you're looking for. Aren't there like lululemon-wearing Stay-at-home mom groups you could join? 

I have my mom group.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Make sure that you give it Five Stars on Apple, and check out my monthly membership for moms in the show notes.