HeyJaredRamona At Midlife
A newsletter by playwright and filmmaker Brooke Berman sparked by her feature film Ramona At Midlife (currently streaming!) centering midlife creativity and reinvention, women in indie film, the motherhood/artist hustle and the creative process at large.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 8
- Latest publication
- Sep 24, 2026
- Audience
- Checking…
- Earliest in this view
- Jul 11, 2026
Latest issues
And Now, A Word from Our “Muthr” (opens the original)
Read excerpt
“Mother” according to Merriam Webster has a long definition including, primarily: A female parent or woman in authority, specifically the superior of a religious community of women, as in Mother Theresa…source or origin, necessity (as in, the mother of invention) material tenderness or affectionshort for motherfucker, vulgar(And if you scroll all the way down, you get to “a slimy or gelatinous mass” as in mother of vinegar, but that’s a tota
Not Asking Permission (opens the original)
Read excerpt
The first time I heard Ani DiFranco, I was 25 and had just gotten to Pittsburgh, where I’d play house in someone else’s apartment for six weeks. I’d driven there with my new boyfriend who had a home-cooking gig nearby. We barely knew each other. After unpacking, he was exhausted from driving and crashed, but I was wide awake, wondering where am I and what have I done? I started looking at the CD’s and cassettes in this apartment (it was 1996) and found Not A Pretty Girl. I put it on the stereo a
The Sweat Lodge (opens the original)
Read excerpt
Dear Reader,Next week, I have a great interview with Substack’s Vivian Manning-Schaffel, whose Substack Muthr, Fckd is one of my faves. Today, however, my usual pub date, I am getting caught up on scripts and rewrites and grant applications. So for your reading pleasure, here’s an oldie but a goodie, The Sweat Lodge. I’ve performed this but I don’t think I’ve ever published it. Inspired by an old friend who said this was the funniest story I’d ever told her. So I wrote it down. (and ye
Welcome to the Second Half of August (opens the original)
Read excerpt
Dear Reader,I have so much to talk about this week. With full transparency, August got to me. Eclipse season, my long-postponed apartment renovation, my son’s ongoing calls from camp, the script I need to rewrite, the other script that I don’t really need to rewrite but keep saying I will, the syllabus due next week, the blocking I promised myself I’d get started on and the final stages of our apartment reno…it’s a fucking free-for-all in my brain right now. But I love Substack, and I wouldn’t d
Local News and Culture (opens the original)
Read excerpt
Dear Reader,We’ve been talking a lot about supporting local cinema on FilmStack—I particularly loved the piece on Ridgewood, Queens, not far from me. Also of note, Emelyn Stuart’s Stuart Cinemas has a new home (even closer to me, because, duh, it’s all about me). (We profiled Stuart last year.) And while full disclo
Publishing over time
Last 90 days. Choose a month to open its work.
Recurring subjects
Named in the text we hold. One piece can cover several.
Audience
No verified audience measurement yet.
About this data
Counts cover the work we have indexed. Tone needs enough text and a confident classification. Excerpts and episode notes are not full articles or transcripts.
Identity or attribution wrong? Suggest a correction.