Within three seconds, when talking with Julia Motyka, one understands why her show, WHAT I KNOW, NOW, is going to be so very entertaining and interesting. Ms. Motyka’s energy, vocabulary choices, and grasp of communicating are so instantly noticeable that one knows her 55-minute, one-woman play, which was the hit of the 2023 Bay Street New Works Festival, is going to be worth seeing. The show runs from July 15th through July 20th at the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor.
In a wide-ranging interview with hamptons.com, Julia Motyka said that over two years ago, she had written what she called “a strange little essay” that she couldn’t find a home for. Then, as she said, “I received an email from some colleagues of mine asking me if I have a solo show in progress that I could present on a series of evenings they were doing at a really wonderful theater.” So, she was invited to perform twenty to twenty-five minutes of a work in progress. She then shaped up that essay and turned it into a performance piece. Then. as she recalls, “I did it, and the response was overwhelmingly positive. In the audience that night, a colleague of mine was there; he and I talked and thought that maybe there is a real show here.”
Eventually, Julia Motyka received some institutional support from a couple of wonderful theaters in New York and then up in the Berkshires and continued to fine-tune and craft the piece and turn it from “…a little twenty-minute weird little essay to a fifty-five-minute solo show.” Last year, she was offered a slot by Bay Street Theater Artistic Director Scott Schwartz at Bay Street for their New Works Festival. The result, using Ms. Motyka’s words, was that “It ran away with the show, many people came, and the response was overwhelmingly positive.”
Therefore, WHAT I KNOW NOW is the bonus show of the 2024 Bay Street Mainstage season. What Ms. Motyka is now promising is a more fine-tuned and shaped play that will entertain the audience. About this show, she says, “It’s a funny and heartbreaking journey of family, faith, legacy, and fear of the unknown.” Ms. Motyka explained that during the process of creating this show, she learned, “It’s a funny thing; this play is deeply based on my life. It is also the first time that, although I have worked as a writer, this show has me stepping on stage in a mostly realized production of my own work. The learning curve has been kind of incredible, an amazing thing to share: these stories and what they mean to me.” She continued, “To see how they (the stories) can change people and offer insight into other people’s lives and their own stories.” Summing up the learning curve, she said, “It is a powerful thing for me as a performer to kind of embody these aspects of myself and create a character out of myself. The perspective that it gives me as a human being and the way that this play’s journey has transformed how I think and feel about different elements of my whole life is amazing.”
WHAT I KNOW NOW was born out of a cancer scare Ms. Motyka had a few years ago. She said she had to configure how she could and would fit with the scary unknown and deal with it, being both afraid and hopeful. In essence, this play has helped her “walk the walk.” She believes that revisiting and really “truthfully embodying and exploring the things that make us who we are is the lifeline of the theater.” She believes this offers her a “powerful opportunity to feel the impact of my family’s legacy and also of my love for them and for my children and for my life.”
In conclusion about the show Ms. Motyka said this, “While it is it an emotional ride there is also humor because I think personally the only way to get through powerful emotions is by finding the light and the humor and the irony in it.”
