Local actress Sara Dabney Tisdale was eight months pregnant when she began rehearsals for her latest play.

“I took about two weeks off to give birth and then came back,” says Tisdale, a former Style reporter. “When I came back to rehearsals after having the baby, my whole center of gravity changed. I’m able to move a lot more freely.”

Fittingly, that new play is “Cry It Out,” Molly Smith Metzler’s dramatic comedy about first-time mothers dealing with the sleepless nights, sore nipples and lack of adult interaction that comes with having a newborn.

“It’s about the joys and heartbreaks of parenting,” explains director Lucretia Marie. “The play is as much about class as it is about finding community and feeling less alone and isolated.”

Staged by Yes, And! Theatrical Co. in partnership with Virginia Rep, the play revolves around Jessie, a high-powered Manhattan attorney who has recently moved to Long Island to raise her child.

“She is grappling with this change in life, what it means to be a career woman who also wants to be a stay-at-home mom, and navigating those choices,” says Lindsey Zelli, who plays Jessie in the show. “This is a comedy with some dramatic flair. It explores what society thinks postpartum and having a baby is like, then highlights the truths and absurdities around it.”

Jessie befriends her next-door neighbor, Lina. Though they come from different socioeconomic backgrounds, the women quickly bond over their shared experience of having newborns. Their fast friendship is thrown for a loop when a neighboring father of a newborn approaches them, asking if his wife Adrienne can join their friend group.

“They’re all very different, but they’re all searching for something in this really tender, raw postpartum period,” says Tisdale, who plays Adrienne. “My character is kind of an outsider, and, at least at the start, doesn’t mesh well with the other two moms.”

As much as Jessie would like to stay at home with her kid, she must contend with a husband who expects her to make partner at her law firm and provide a second income for the household.

“She’s trying to make all the right choices, but it’s almost impossible because everyone has a different opinion on what should be the right choice,” says Zelli of her character. “At her core she’s a bit anxious, and there’s nothing like having a child to bring those anxieties to a head.”

Zelli, who had her first child a year and a half ago, identifies with the challenges of balancing motherhood with a career.

“This is me a year ago,” Zelli says. “March of last year I had to go back to my day job, and it was super hard. It’s been cathartic for me to explore, revisit that time in my life and tell someone else’s story with the experience that I had.”

In real life, Tisdale and Zelli are close friends who have bonded over acting, motherhood and doing both at the same time.

“Pregnancy is a tough time for an actor, because you’re out for a while, a year usually, and physically your body is telling a different story” than what a character might onstage, Tisdale says. “I love being a mom, but I would also love to be acting or rehearsing a show. It’s logistically hard.”

After rehearsing or performing, Tisdale says she still has “the whole night ahead” of her, getting up every few hours to feed and change her newborn. She says she reached out to other Richmond actors who are mothers to see how they did it.

“They said it feels crazy all the time, and that’s normal,” she says. “You’re doing it, even though it feels crazy.”

The two actresses have previously staged works that represent pregnancy onstage. Zelli and her husband Jeff Ashworth staged “With Child,” a cabaret about their first year of parenthood, last September. Tisdale starred in “Interesting Condition,” a night of scenes and monologues about pregnancy, this February while she was in her third trimester with her second child.

Tisdale appreciates how “Cry It Out” dramatizes the postpartum period, a time when mothers of newborns meet and form unique bonds.

“It’s such a common universal experience, but you do realize that it’s a situation that throws people together that might not otherwise meet or befriend each other,” Tisdale says. “Those friendships, they either last or they dissolve.”

Marie says it’s been a joy to work with cast members who can draw from their own experience of motherhood, and that the show is particularly good at examining the feelings of guilt and judgment that parents experience

“It’s hysterical,” Marie says. “There’s some dark moments, but it’s truly more of a comedy than anything. People should expect to laugh a lot.”

Zelli and Tisdale say the play should be relatable to anyone who knows a mother.

“You don’t have to be a mom to respond to and enjoy finding meaning in the show,” Tisdale says. “This is about family, and everyone can relate to that.”

Yes, And! Theatrical Co. and Virginia Rep’s “Cry It Out” runs May 15-31 at Theatre Gym 114 W. Broad St., 23220. For more information visit yesandrva.org.