Review: (Ottawa) 8 Ways My Mother Was Conceived

Like A Virgin
by Valerie Cardinal

I heard a lot about Michaela Di Cesare’s 8 Ways My Mother Was Conceived on the Montreal Fringe circuit in 2011. I never got to see it, so I was excited to review it now, after it’s had a few years and a few more shows under its belt. 

8 Ways uses a quirky starting point to tell a unique and personal family story. According to family legend, Michaela’s mother was born of a virgin, much like Jesus. Throughout the play, Di Cesare explores the different possibilities surrounding her mother’s conception (spoiler alert: there are eight). Along the way, it becomes an exploration of four generations of women, and what womanhood means to each of them. 

Michaela Di Cesare definitely deserved a bigger opening night audience than she got at the Gladstone. She is a charming and charismatic performer as she quite literally puts herself in the shoes of multiple family members. However, she sometimes had trouble disappearing completely into the characters; conversations between family members occasionally became difficult to follow because there didn’t seem to be much of a switch.

First-Person: Michaela di Cesare on the evolution of 8 Ways My Mother Was Conceived

From one-woman (in every sense of the word) FRINGE show to true team effort

How this remount changes everything

by Michaela di Cesare

I was asked how the input of a new director, Tamara Brown, has taken 8 Ways my Mother was Conceived from a FRINGE production to something “more mainstage.”

This is going to be a little metaphysical. I can’t help it. Everything to do with this show has come about through a series of drastic life-changing events that have unfolded over a two-year period from the fall of 2009 to the fall of 2011 (roughly) which could not have fallen into place in a more literary fashion if they were being written into a novel. I’m only going to list the uncanny events that have to do with Tamara (because I think people are tired of hearing the story about how I fell in love and got married). I’ll begin by saying that in some ways her influence has been there from the beginning.