Tara Handron knows recovery.

Her one woman show, Drunk with Hope in Chicago (previously performed as What’s a Girl to do When It’s Time to Put Down the Drink?) is built from two years of research at Georgetown. Her masters program led her to investigate gender differences in recovery, and differences between in-person meetings and new formats appearing online. Observing in-person and live meetings of women in recovery led her to write Hope, a 60-minute exploration of women in various stages of recovery.

We sat down to chat about Hope’s inception, and its soon to open performance at the Capital Fringe Festival.

Can you tell us about the format of the show?

It’s a series of monologues that follows what recovering alcoholics experience: life when they were drinking or using drugs, what caused that shift where they decided to stop, and what life is now. Because, you don’t put down the drink or the drugs and say, “Oh! Everything’s fine!” Suddenly, you have to deal with everything you weren’t dealing with.

So the beginning is a variety of women reaching their respective bottoms. I really wanted people to see that there are all different types of alcoholics, and all types of ways realize, “I can’t do this responsibly. I can’t do this in a healthy way.” For some people it’s DUIs, for others it’s crazy dramatic stuff, or just realizing “I can’t get through the day without thinking about a drink.”

Halfway through there’s a shift, and I use a character, Hope, to offer an arc to the show. We see her in the beginning with some sobriety time, then flash back to when she hits bottom. Then, we see her in recovery with other women. And in that second half, between five monologues where someone can experience what it might feel like to sit in a meeting and hear someone share honestly, I’ve interspersed it with online meetings. We’ve created a template using voiceover, and it’s just fun to see the two next to each other.

Writing challenges?

I guess that the first challenge was that this was the first thing I’ve written. So even content aside, asking myself, “How am I going to convey this?” And also, I felt I had so many interesting women and stories. It was challenging to trust that I didn’t have to include absolutely every single detail.

How did you find the gender difference affected recovery? Did you find stories of failure in terms of what is expected of mothers and wives, stories that add pressure to a female recovering addict? Or, is it all equally tragic?

I think it’s all equally disturbing and painful. When you listen to the stories in the room, among people already in the recovery realm, there feels to be less of a difference between the feelings of males and females. There are similar feelings of elation, depression, whatever. But in terms of getting there, that’s where there seems to be the difference. For women, there seems to be more shame. Often wives or mothers will need to use half-measures to get back on their feet instead of perhaps being able to go away and really take care of themselves. Women are still often the glue that holds a family together.

If there were two or three scenes you wanted to make sure people knew they could come and see, which would they be?

Oh gosh. I’d almost rather not say. I’d rather say, come in with a really open mind, and be ready to go for a ride. Be ready to allow everything you know or think you know about alcoholism and recovery to float into the background, and really allow yourself to experience, as best one can, what it’s like to be in an actual meeting.

And don’t be afraid to identify. The things alcoholics go through are human emotions and human instincts. Allow yourself to feel it, identify, and not worry, “Oh my God, I’m an alcoholic because I identify!” [Laughs] And if someone does realize they have a problem, then that is pretty amazing, too.

What is in Hope for anyone who isn’t interested in the subject of recovery?

Hm. Well, throwing the recovery part to the side, definitely fun, rich, interesting women. I have characters in the beginning still having fun in their drinking. They’re funny. They’re that person you find fun to laugh with, laugh at. And then in the second half, look forward to watching people walking through the human experience without an escape valve, a quick fix of any kind. There are also moments of darkness and depth. This is a fatal illness, after all.

And really, those experiences aren’t limited to recovery. People grow and change because of life experiences all the time. It doesn’t have to be something…proscribed. I think they’ll walk away with hope.

Drunk with Hope in Chicago opens July 11. Ticket information here.