By Shannon Hicks

Leesa Sklover-Filgate uses music, meditation, and guided imagery to help heal the soul. The founder of Optiself Center for Counseling & Wellness in Sandy Hook, Dr Sklover-Filgate, PhD, incorporates her years of training as a music therapist into her counseling of adults, couples, and children.

Now she has taken that training, combined it with studies in musical theater while a student at Northwestern University and subsequent years of writing and performing her own music, and put together a full-length musical called Mother Me Therapy. The work will debut at The Studio at Cherry Lane Theatre in New York City next week.

Performances are scheduled for 7 pm Wednesday, June 15, through Saturday, June 18. Tickets are $25, with a portion of the show’s proceeds promised to an orphanage in Ethiopia Dr Sklover-Filgate has been put in touch with through Save The Children.

The production is being directed and choreographed by Doug Schanuel, who has a number of credits as a Broadway stage manager and actor.

According to its website, Cherry Lane Theatre has always specialized in “innovative, thrill- seeking theatre.” The theater encourages new works and new writers “in a substantive method that makes a difference. … New, cutting-edge writers are cultivated alongside master writers with proven track records, as an opportunity for both artists to grow and develop their talents.”

The Studio Theatre at Cherry Lane is focused on new play development.

As New York’s longest-running Off-Broadway Theatretheater, Cherry Lane obviously remains committed to supporting emerging playwrights from first draft to full production.

For Dr Sklover-Filgate, this means her show will debut in “one of the best Off-Broadway theaters in New York City,” she said recently. “We’re hoping it will be presented elsewhere in the future, but I’m very happy with this starting point. Cherry Lane has hosted some of the best playwrights in the world.”

Mother Me Therapy is based on therapy sessions, but not necessarily on patients that Dr Sklover-Filgate has had. It’s It is also about juggling many things during one’s life, and finding a balance for peace.

“I had a patient who I came to care about, and after she died I started thinking about what it would be like to have therapy with the patient’s daughter.

“The play has many ideas about mothers and fathers, but it isn’t about mothers per se. It’s about the verb of mothering and how therapists symbolize a safe place for their patients,” explained Dr Sklover-Filgate. “The play then offers a series of vignettes including one where a patient wants to learn more about her mother. I play the ghost of that mother.”

Dr Sklover-Filgate’s daughter, Emma Rae, 7, plays that daughter, named Skye. In another story, Emma Rae plays an abused child.

Michael Filgate, Leesa’s husband, helped to write some of show’s songs and sings on the CD accompanying the show. The show’s score features original music by Dr Sklover-Filgate.

In addition to the ghost mother, Dr Sklover-Filgate plays the mother of a woman who has had a C-section, someone who has lost her mother, and someone who wishes for a daughter among the seven different roles she takes on. She compares the play in style to Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues.

“There is one underlying storyline, but you see differing views through the eyes of the patients and their stories,” said Dr Sklover-Filgate.

“I’m living this play,” Dr Sklover-Filgate said recently. “The practice has been very busy, and with rehearsals for the play things have been more hectic than usual. I’m definitely compartmentalizing my life right now.”

In addition to promising part of the show’s proceeds to an orphanage in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where up to 250 children who have been orphaned or abandoned because of AIDS live, Dr Sklover-Filgate has additionally promised that $5 from the each sale of the show’s CD will also be donated to Save The Children.

The home, called Mekanesa, is the only home in Ethiopia designed to house HIV-infected children. The children average between newborns to age 14, many of whom die from their infections. Many of the children are also handicapped.

Dr Sklover-Filgate learned about the home through a patient show who is directly involved with Save The Children. When Dr Sklover-Filgate mentioned she was hoping to help those in southeast Asia affected by last winter’s tsunamis, her patient told Dr Sklover-Filgate that while STC was still accepting donations for tsunami victims, she might want to consider other areas in the world that had temporarily been overshadowed.

That’s when Dr Sklover-Filgate learned about Mekanesa and its Memory Books program, where children create personalized books about themselves that go into a growing collection at the orphanage.

“The fear of being forgotten very soon had long been a concern for these children, who would watch their friends die and then be left with only their memories, nothing tangible, to remember their friends,” said Dr Sklover-Filgate. “Now they can immortalize their life. Children have improved their perspective to death with these books. They have acknowledged the death of their friends, and they do not show as much anxiety about their own. They will be remembered.”

Therapy that starts in Sandy Hook and has already reached a stage in New York City will, therefore, offering a dose of comfort to children on the other side of the world.

Reservations are suggested for Mother Me Therapy. The theater is at 38 Commerce Street (south of Bleeker). Call 775-2589 or 914-860-0488 or send email to MotherMeTherapy@charter.net for tickets or additional information.