From Basement to Stage: Playing Jo March for a Second Time
Guest artist Mackenzie Moyer (top right), with the rest of the cast of Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble’s 2026 production of Little Women, superimposed over a screenshot of Moyer from the 2021 production trailer.
The first time I played Jo March, I was 22, jobless, and performing from my parents' basement. It was December of 2020 into January 2021, and we were still deep in lockdown. I had recently “graduated” with a degree in acting, a thing that nobody was doing, moved home, and spent my days making jewelry and scrolling Instagram. But for three blessed hours a night, a team of a dozen out-of-work theatre artists got on Zoom to rehearse a new adaptation of Little Women.
Our tiny Zoom boxes became the March sisters’ attic. It became a way to connect, release, and grieve together. We played, laughed, and cried. We connected with each other despite the lagging wifi, the shoddy webcam quality, the hundreds of miles separating us.
Above: Mackenzie Moyer zooming with some of the cast and creative team of Sarah Elizabeth Yorke’s first production of Little Women by Heather Chrisler as a digital performance in 2021. Photo courtesy of Mackenzie Moyer.
One of the most important connections to come out of that experience was with director Sarah Elizabeth Yorke. It was our first time working together, and I now count her as one of my dearest creative collaborators. Our projects over the years have ranged from Zoom to film to traditional theatre, and now we have come back to the piece that started it all. It's been five years since that first production of Little Women, and the world and my life look very different now.
I think of my life in two chunks: pre-pandemic and pandemic. The fabric of our society has been irrevocably changed by what started in 2020. (I don't consider the pandemic over, not while over 100,000 Americans are still dying from Covid every year and millions of people are suffering from post-viral conditions and complications). The impact can be seen everywhere, from politics to religion to relationships and beyond. We have come a long way from the early lockdown days, but the pandemic has forever changed both the world and how my life is unfurling within it.
Returning to Jo March five years later has put that change in stark contrast: my relationship to time, space, fear, joy, and sorrow has been turned upside down.
“It’s as though she has been holding her breath inside me for five years, and now she finally gets to exhale.”
Photo by Kyle Huggins.
While my first experience with Little Women on Zoom was joyous and cathartic in many ways, performing alone in my parents' basement was also a profoundly lonely experience. The loneliest part was not that I was looking at a screen, or unable to physically touch my fellow actors, it was what happened when we all logged off after the performance.
Little Women is full of joy, but equally full of sorrow, so it was a uniquely devastating experience to send all that joy, love, and pain out into the ether and not know who received it and how. When I logged off, I was met with a dark, silent house. My fellow actors weren’t there to check in with me. There were no hugs or hand squeezes or dressing room banter. Without those rituals, I found it difficult to decompress and take off Jo's grief at the end of the night. The things that actors carry as an ensemble feel heavier alone.
This time, I am not alone and the burden is not so heavy to carry. Jo’s grief slides off me as the four of us bustle around the dressing room after a performance, joking about the lines we blanked on or the reactions from the audience. We talk about the post-show dinner we are looking forward to or the hike we are thinking of doing on our day off. Laughter is an off-ramp and we leave sorrow onstage for the night.
Above: Beth, Meg, Jo, and Amy on Meg's wedding day (l-r: Kimie Muroya, Amy Rene Byrne, Mackenzie Moyer, and Arrianna Daniels). Photo by Kyle Huggins.
To return to a role is never a guarantee, only a gift. Finding Jo again five years later with this team of artists in Bloomsburg has been an honor. Jo is fiery, passionate, and funny, and it has been profoundly healing to share her spirit with live audiences. It’s as though she has been holding her breath inside me for five years, and now she finally gets to exhale.
When I think back to that 2021 production on Zoom, I think about what a blessing it was to connect from so many separate places around the country in that dark time; to find an approximation of togetherness through the uncertainty, the pain, the humming current of anxiety that underscored our days. To do anything with other people, even through a screen, was like coming up for air before being plunged back underwater.
It’s easy to forget how miraculous it is to be together in the flesh five years later - to embrace and laugh and kiss and run and whistle and cry together in the same room. A miracle, all of it. May I never take it for granted.
Below: Beth, Amy, Meg, and Jo on Meg's wedding day (l-r: Kimie Muroya, Arrianna Daniels, Amy Rene Byrne, and Mackenzie Moyer). Photo by Kyle Huggins.
Mackenzie Moyer, Guest Writer
Mackenzie Moyer (she/her) currently plays Jo March in Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble’s on-going production of Little Women. Moyer has acted at Bedlam, the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, The 24 Hour Plays, the cell, SoHo Playhouse, Lenfest Center for the Arts at Columbia University, and the Tank. Next month, she and Sarah Elizabeth Yorke are set to start shooting their short film, Joan. You can read more of her writing and commentary at momentsofjoyandfury.substack.com and @mackenzie_moyer on YouTube.
