The Civilians’ new piece, shaped entirely from those transcripts and tapes, is “You Better Sit Down: Tales From My Parents’ Divorce,’’ which had its world premiere at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in August. ArtsEmerson brings it to the Paramount Center Mainstage this week for a six-show run beginning Tuesday.
“I’d spoken to my mom several times before that about the divorce and about details,’’ says Robbie Collier Sublett, who plays his Texan mother, Janet, in the show, “but I would not have had the carte-blanche badge of courage to venture into all the unknown territories that I was able to by doing this project. And she has said to me explicitly that she probably would have spoken about it to somebody else, but not in the same detail.’’
“You Better Sit Down’’ combines and intercuts sections of the interviews, which are performed as monologues by each parent’s own child. It’s a more natural transformation than one might think, the actors say.
“I feel like I’ve been preparing to play my mom my whole life,’’ Sublett says, sitting beside fellow company member Jennifer R. Morris in a restaurant on the Upper West Side. “I’ve been imitating her since as long as I can remember.’’
“I mean,’’ says Morris, a native New Yorker who channels her mother, Beverly, in the performance, “doesn’t everyone imitate their parents?’’
But not everyone asks their parents’ help with that, inquiring into difficult memories that will be shaped into a narrative for public consumption. The company’s previous projects - including investigations of evangelical Christianity in “This Beautiful City,’’ the notion of loss in “Gone Missing,’’ and the issue of urban development in “In the Footprint: The Battle Over Atlantic Yards,’’ which the Civilians performed at the Paramount last January - have tended to fit more comfortably with its preferred mode of journalistic reserve.
