Memory House

Margaret Downing June 14, 2012 4:00AM

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Several years ago, playwright and college professor Kathleen Tolan interviewed a woman who had adopted a six-year-old girl from a village in Russia and brought her to New York City. In Memory House, Tolan paired that adopted-from-Russia daughter idea — moving the character's age to her late teens — with some of her own experiences as a parent whose daughter had just undergone the college admissions process. The resulting play, set in a kitchen at night, matches mother Maggie — trying to put together a blueberry pie — with her critical daughter Katia, who is carping at mom while avoiding writing the college essays that are due at midnight. ''Teenagers are much more kind of given to extremes and black-and-white assertions and that's really compelling,'' Tolan says of the play, which was first performed in 2005 and is making its regional premiere at Main Street Theatre. But this story ''of leaving home and being left,'' Tolan says, isn't just tension and sadness; it has humor throughout. Main Street Theatre Artistic Director Rebecca Greene Udden (a parent in real life) will play Maggie, while Joanna Hubbard (Life Is a Dream) plays Katia.

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Margaret Downing is the editor-in-chief who oversees the Houston Press newsroom and its online publication. She frequently writes on a wide range of subjects.

Contact: Margaret Downing

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