DOG MOM
SEASON 17In the midst of a mid-life crisis, a hardened New Yorker who is NOT a dog person rescues a stray dog and discovers that sometimes the ones we save are the ones who might save us. A hilarious and heartwarming comedy.
By Tate Elizabeth Hanyok
Direction By Rick St. Peter
September 24-October 11 at the Carol Piersol Stage at Firehouse Theatre
DOG MOM is produced at Cadence as part of a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere. Other partner theaters are B Street Theatre (Sacramento, California), Oregon Contemporary Theatre (Eugene, Oregon), Florida Studio Theatre (Sarasota, Florida), and EnActe Arts (Sunnyvale, California). For more information, please visit nnpn.org.
DOG MOM is presented by special arrangement with Tate Elizabeth Hanyok.
THE VIDEOTAPING OR MAKING OF ELECTRONIC OR OTHER AUDIO AND/OR VISUAL RECORDINGS OF THIS PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTING RECORDINGS OR STREAMS IN ANY MEDIUM, INCLUDING THE INTERNET , IS STRICTL Y PROHIBITED, A VIOLATION OF THE AUTHOR(S)’S RIGHTS AND ACTIONABLE UNDER UNITED STATES COPYRIGHT LAW.
Cast
Liz … Rachel Marrs
Dog/Foster … Grey Garrett
Nell/Ex’s Dog … Laine Satterfield
Ruben/Ex … Robbie Winston
SWING (Shelter Worker/Male Passerby/Dog Park Goer/Man/Vet/Jamie/Alley Cat/Lady Jogger) … Jerold E. Solomon*
SWING Understudy (Shelter Worker/Male Passerby/Dog Park Goer/Man/Vet/Jamie/Alley Cat/Lady Jogger) … Evan Nasteff
*Member of Actors' Equity Association, the labor union representing American Actors and Stage Managers in the theatre.
Production Team
Scenic Design … Daniel Allen
Lighting Design … Steve Koehler
Costume Design … Pam Connolly
Properties Design … Tim Moehring
Composer … Kylar Sircar
Sound Design … Grace LaBelle
Scenic Charge … Caitlin Irelan
Assistant Director … Alana Sharp
Stage Management … Keegan Farrell
Production Manager … Todd LaBelle
Assistant Stage Management … Anjali Sharma
Technical Director … Emily Vial
Crew
Backstage Crew & Wardrobe Supervisor … Piper Stewart
Backstage Crew … Anjali Sharma
Costume Assistant ... Lori Pasternak
Production Intern ... B'Ria Nicholas
Pet Adoption Organization Coordinator ... Avery Ingram
Firehouse Master Electrician … Griffin Hardy
Marketing, PR & Communications
Photographers ... Jason Collins Photography, Tom Topinka
Videographer ... Michael Sanabira and Kingbird Studios
Marketing, PR, & Communications ... Showbuzz Factory, Creasy Woolfolk Concepts, Sara Krivanec, Liv Wilson, Anjali Sharma, Caroline Emily Johnson
Playbill Design … Caroline Emily Johnson
Graphic Designers … Julie Basinski, Anjali Sharma
Firehouse Marketing Director ... Montrece Hill
Administration
Founding Artistic Director ... Anna Senechal Johnson
Associate Artistic Director ... Laine Satterfield
Bookkeeper … Jill Porcelli
Join us in Support of DOG MOM!
Make a donation to Cadence in honor or in memory of your best pet friend. All species of pet friends are welcome!
Special Events
Meet the Playwright
Playwright Tate Elizabeth Hanyok will join the cast and creative team for a post-show discussion following the 2 PM matinee on September 27.
Animal Adoptions
Richmond Animal Care and Control (RACC) and the Richmond SPCA will host post-show meet-and-greets and adoption events immediately following the 2 PM matinees. RACC will join us on October 3 and 10. The Richmond SPCA will join us on October 4 and 11.
About the Playwright
From the Playwright
Tate Elizabeth Hanyok (Playwright) was named one of the Moviemaker Top 25 Writers to watch and is known for her bold, female-driven comedies. Her genre-spanning portfolio includes the teen romantic comedy Sex APPeal, which she wrote and produced for Hulu, and female driven thriller Friends Until The End, which she directed for Lifetime. Tate produced and adapted the play Love and Baseball, which she also starred in, for HBO MAX. On-camera credits include The Office, Superstore, Shameless, The Mentalist, NCIS, Community, and the film The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, opposite Steve Carrell. DOG MOM marks her first produced play, and she had the absolute time of her life playing the role of "Dog" in one of the NNPN Rolling World Premieres at The B Street Theatre in CA. Tate’s storytelling journey began on stage, where her experience as a performer shaped a distinctly protagonist-centered approach. While attending VCU she appeared in The House of Yes at Firehouse Theatre and The Taming of the Shrew at the Barksdale Theatre under the direction of Rick St. Peter. Tate could not be happier for this story to return to the artists and community that helped shape her creative journey from the very beginning.
Photo by Steve Acevedo
DOG MOM was born from a desire to create shared laughter and connection during a moment of profound social fragmentation. In increasingly fraught times, the play looks toward one of the few remaining points of near-universal affection—our relationships with our pets—as a way to restore community and mutual recognition. The bond between people and their pets offers a rare common language, and comedy became the vehicle through which that language could invite audiences into collective release, empathy, and belonging. A secondary and equally vital inspiration was the lack of middle-life women in contemporary comedic storytelling. As a writer committed to female-driven comedy, I sought to center a woman in the midst of a midlife reckoning—an experience often rendered invisible, flattened, or treated with shame. The play also engages with the growing reality that many women do not become mothers, not as a failure or deviation, but as a lived truth deserving of dignity and narrative space. DOG MOM aims to meet that reality with humor rather than judgment, and with compassion rather than correction—asserting that womanhood, fulfillment, and worth are not singular paths, but many.
— Tate Elizabeth Hanyok
About the Director
Instagram: @rickstpeter8
www.richardstpeter.com
Rick St. Peter (Director) is an award-winning stage director, producer, and educator with more than 20 years of experience in professional and academic theatre. He has worked internationally with the ProEnglish Theatre of Ukraine, directed the first American production at Prague's MeetFactory, and two productions with the National Theatre of Romania in Craiova, Romania. During the height of the Covid Pandemic, he was one of 100 international directors – and the only American – to participate in the National Theatre of Romania's Hektomeron, adapting and directing “The Fifth Story from Day the Seventh” of Boccaccio's Decameron. The production – billed as 100 Days/100 Stories/100 Directors from 100 Countries – was streamed worldwide throughout 2021. During the 2016-2017 academic year, he had the honor of serving as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Craiova in Romania. For the university, he directed Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis (4.48 Psihoza) and guest directed a series of new international one-act plays under the title Private Spaces (Spatiu Privat) at the Romanian National Theatre in Craiova. Other selected credits include: Checking In (June Havoc Theatre, New York), Hamlet (Temple Theatre, North Carolina), Romeo and Juliet (Cincinnati Shakespeare Company), Avenue Q and The Rocky Horror Show (Warehouse Theatre, SC), a new adaptation of Feydeau’s A Flea in Her Ear (Centre Stage, SC), The Taming of the Shrew (featuring Tate Hanyok as Bianca, Barksdale Theatre), The Weir (Garza Stage, TX), Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (Barksdale Theatre), Stop Kiss (Richmond T riangle Players), The Laramie Project (Richmond Triangle Players/Virginia Rep, 2003), Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop (Theatre Gym, Barksdale Theatre, TheatreVirginia). Recent directing credits include King James (Richmond Shakespeare), Broken Glass (Jewish Family Theatre) and Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare at the Ruins, Barboursville, VA). He served as the Associate Artistic Director of Barksdale Theatre and TheatreVirginia, and the Artistic Director of Kentucky’s Actors Guild of Lexington. He currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Theatre and Theatre Program Coordinator at Virginia Union University in Richmond. He has taught or guest lectured at Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance (London), T rinity College (Dublin), the University of Kentucky, Centre College (KY), and others. He is an alum of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, a 2007 participant in the LaMaMa/Umbria International Directors Symposium held in Spoleto, Italy, and a 2002 recipient of a Princess Grace Foundation Theater Award.
From the Director
"Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring—it was peace." — Milan Kundera
I have been a Dog Dad longer than I have been a real dad. For most of my adult life, I have had a Labrador Retriever by my side. My black lab Othello was my college graduation present to myself. He was six weeks old when he picked me in 1995 and I can mark the milestones of my early adult life based on his age. When he was 4 years old, I brought home the blanket my newborn daughter had been wrapped in and let him get used to her scent. He promptly spent the next 2 years sleeping by her crib. Othello was by my side when I left RVA in 2003 to move to Kentucky to take over a struggling theatre. He was a happy 9-year-old in March 2005 when I got a call during a tech rehearsal – while sitting next to Steve Koehler – that my wife had gone into labor with our son. Othello loved him as much as he loved our daughter. As it will eventually do for all of us, time caught up to Othello in 2008. My entire family was devastated and as life interrupted, we spent a few years without a dog. I started a Ph.D. program in 2010 and promised my kids that when I finished, we could get a new dog. Fast forward to 2014 and 10-week-old Harley Granville Barker St. Peter, a sweet chocolate Lab, enters our life. She actually chose my wife, who was then battling stage IV breast cancer. A year later, it was Harley helping my kids and I get through the death of their mother and my wife. Harley moves with me from South Carolina to Louisiana to Virginia, never complaining, always faithful, always ready for a swim. This past spring as I began pre-production on this beautiful, funny and heartfelt play you are about to watch, I lost Harley to a previously undiscovered medical condition. I have been re-married for almost two years to my wonderful wife Patt and before I can even ask, she says when I feel the time is right, we can get another dog. Another Lab. Months later, as I write this director’s note, sitting next to me chewing contentedly on a stick – “It is a very good stick. The best stick.” – is nearly 4-month-old black Lab Kit Marlowe St. Peter. The circle of life begins anew. What adventures will I have with Kit? How many waves will he crash into in the OBX? What heartaches will he see me through? Only the future will tell. But I can tell you it is always better facing the future with a dog by your side.
“I wish I was on a spaceship/just me and my dog and an impossible view.” — boygenius
Peace and Love;
— Rick St. Peter
September 8, 2026
Accessibility Statement
Firehouse Theatre will provide accommodations for individuals with disabilities and follows all applicable federal, state, and local laws, regulations, and guidelines. Firehouse offers accessible entrance/exit, seating in the theatre, ADA compliant restrooms, and reserved handicapped parking upon request.
If you require special accommodations or would like to request assistance of any kind, please call the Firehouse Theatre at 804.355.2001 or email info@firehousetheatre.org
Sponsors
This production is made possible through the generous support of the following (including an anonymous sponsor):
