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Survival Skills, Not Just For The Wild

author sits on a park bench

Author, humor writer and playwright Polly Frost comes to the Brown County Playhouse Sunday May 13th, Mother's Day, for her one woman show…. How to Survive Your Adult Relationship with Your Family.

Frost was a successful writer but was unsatisfied. "I started to realize, in this age of the internet and social net working that I still wanted to connect with live audiences. And I wanted to do it in intimate settings. I wanted to really make that connection. I've worked with a lot of theatre people in New York and they all encouraged me. They said that ‘you're not an actor, but writers should get up there and they should also perform in front of live audiences.' So I took that and ran with it."

Although Frost has written humor pieces for the New Yorker, Atlantic and the New York Times, she's quick to say that "How to Survive…" does contain humor, but it's not stand up comedy.

"No, no," she exclaims. "For one thing, I'm middle aged so I prefer to sit down. And I wanted to touch on a wide variety of emotions. It is funny, but people also cry during my show. And then they laugh again. I think that the full range of feelings is why so many people have come up to me after I talk and said that they found something to relate to in the show."

"How to Survive Your Adult Relationship with your Family grew out of my learning that there were some challenges that you weren't prepared for. There are all these emotional curve balls that get thrown at you. People change, they get divorced, and people come into your family through marriage. And you're not prepared for any of this."

"One of the things that people like during my show is that I actually give out tips. I had this group of mothers, and a daughter and a grandmother and an aunt and they were talking through my show and whenever I did a survival tip they would start talking. At first I thought, are they heckling me? But no they were saying ‘absolutely, absolutely, that's what you need to get through that.'"

"By the way, one of my major tips that I look forward to sharing is about how not to become the designated Cinderella of your family, the go-to-person for every melt down in the extended family. People really like that one."

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