- July 8, 2026
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There are few epithets more hurtful than “childless cat lady.” It conjures up images of failure, loneliness and empty wine bottles. Being called a “dog mom” is a different story. It seems fun and open-hearted, even if a dog dad isn’t in the picture.
By definition, dog owners are more social than feline owners. When they take Fido or Fifi for a walk, someone will undoubtedly tell them how cute their dog is and maybe even invite them to a meetup at the dog park. Pretty soon, they’re part of a pack.
In Florida Studio Theatre’s new play, “Dog Mom,” a newly divorced woman named Liz gets a new lease (Or should we say leash?) on life when she fosters a dog. At first, her sense of connection to her new pet is so tentative she can’t come up with a name for the dog.
Much to her surprise, Liz’s canine companion helps her navigate a new life in the city, where she’s moved back after her married life in the suburbs came to an end.
Thanks to her dog, Liz gets to know her pushy, older neighbor, who is also a dog owner. She also meets an assortment of characters, all played to great effect by Kraig Swartz, à la Alec Guinness in “Kind Hearts and Coronets.”
No spoilers here, but the pets are stars in their own right. For now, the folks who help bring them to life will remain unsung.
The hounds get to know each other and to teach their owners how to smell the roses ... and the pizza ... and the poop. (It’s hard to avoid scatalogical humor when you’re dealing with dogs.)
Liz learns how to live in the moment from her dog, whose memory seems to last no longer than a minute or two. She also learns to play. Who knew sticks could be so interesting?
The woman who wrote the play, that’s who. Although she’s never taken a course in writing scripts for screen or stage, Tate Elizabeth Hanyok has spent a great deal of her career on the sets of TV sitcoms, both as an actor and as a coach to young performers.
Hanyok sent “Dog Mom” to FST at the urging of a friend who had performed at the regional theater. The play was accepted for FST’s 2025 Burdick New Play Reading Festival. At the festival, the script-in-hand reading for a live audience was directed by Nancy Rominger, who is also the director of the current production.
Hanyok said she was inspired to write “Dog Mom” because she wanted to return to her theater roots. Her first job out of college was as an intern at Sacramento’s B Street Theatre company, which she still considers “her family” more than 20 years after moving to LA to pursue acting.
B Street Theatre is one of four companies that banded with Sarasota’s FST to produce “Dog Mom” as a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere.
The others are Oregon Contemporary Theatre in Eugene, Oregon, Cadence Theatre in Richmond, Virginia, and EnActe Arts in Sunnyvale, California.
During a wide-ranging conversation with Hanyok, the infectious sense of humor that informs “Dog Mom” is apparent.
To wit: “When you think about what roles you’ll play when you hit middle age, you say to yourself, “I’d be a mean Martha in ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ but then what?”
Or, when asked why she left her beloved theater company: “I broke my coccyx because I had to fall on my bum 100 times in a farce that kept getting extended. While I was recovering, I went to LA and shot a commercial. When I saw the paycheck, I thought, ‘What am I literally breaking my ass in theater for?’”
In order to support herself in LA while looking for acting jobs, Hanyok worked as a dishwasher at a restaurant and cleaned houses, “anything to keep living the dream.” She had some success in TV commercials, including “Miss Decisive” for Hyundai and as a spokesperson for Aspen Dental.
Hanyok and “West Wing” creator Aaron Sorkin both experienced heartbreak when the “Saturday Night Live”-inspired TV series “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” didn’t get picked up for a second season after its 2006-07 run on NBC.
Hanyok played a minor character whose uncredited role got scaled back. But the silver lining was she spent hours reciting and hearing lines written by the master of snappy dialogue.
If the late writer/director Nora Ephron was famous for saying, “Everything is copy,” Hanyok’s motto appears to be “Everything you do is leading you to your next job.” You just might not know it at the time.
Hanyok got into screenwriting by writing treatments and scripts for young actors she was coaching. She won recognition after submitting her work to screenwriting competitions held by the Austin Film Festival and other festivals. In 2018, she won Best Comedy screenplay at AFF for “Sex APPeal.”
Hanyok initially pitched her screenplays to Lifetime Productions because the family-oriented network doesn’t require writers to belong to the Writers Guild of America. (She has since earned her WGA card, adding it to her membership in the SAG- AFTRA union for film and TV actors.)
Although Lifetime leans into rom-coms, it also produces thrillers like Hanyok’s “Friends Until the End,” which was shot earlier this year in Duluth, Minnesota, in lots of spooky locations.
Growing up in an old mill town in Northern Virginia in the shadow of Civil War battlegrounds, Hanyok says she took history for granted. The future playwright spent most of her time down at the local pond that grew out of a crater created by a cannonball. She was on the trail of “critters.”
But Hanyok has learned to appreciate history, especially since she spends most of her time in Los Angeles, where “The Brady Bunch” split level is accorded the respect usually associated with historic homes like Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.
Hanyok’s definition of what is historic will no doubt get expanded during her upcoming trip to London.
That’s where Sunnyvale-based EnActe engineered the U.K. premiere of “Dog Mom,” at Southwark Playhouse Borough in October.
“Dog Mom” almost got a new title because the British call their mothers “Mum.” In the end, it was decided that because the play is clearly set in America, Liz gets to be a dog mom, even on the other side of the pond.
When Hanyok’s in London for the first time, she’ll be able to visit the reconstructed Globe Theatre, where Shakespeare’s plays are being performed more than 400 years after they premiered at the original Globe, which was located just 750 feet away at a site on the River Thames.
The Bard holds a special place in Hanyok’s heart. Early in her career, she was cast in Arkansas Repertory Theatre’s production of “The Tempest” in Little Rock, Arkansas.
“It was a really magical experience because we did it on a lake,” Hanyok says. “Prospero came in on a little boat in the opening and there was a sunset during intermission. Act Two started in the dark with torches. It was just the most visceral theatre experience you could ever have.”
“An audience,” she adds, “is never going to get that from AI.”
