Abstract

This play is the product of a five-year creative process in which I was determined to knit together a story from the wildly-contradictory narratives of my mother and father about their brief but stormy and compelling relationship. I began with many questions about the ethics of writing about living people but was also cognizant that I had been shamed out of speaking honestly about my own perspective and experiences due to my parents' fears. I wondered where the line can or should be drawn between one's own clan narrative and that of one's parents. While seeking the truth was key to my research, I recognize that the notion of truth is always complicated by the nature of memory, by ulterior motives and wishful thinking, and by the unconscious denial of trauma. This play became fiction as the characters developed, and as they evolved, I named them to reflect that they exist only to fulfill a story I need to tell, which is about a family broken apart by deceit and desperate to reconnect but held in stasis by denial. Creation can be sorcery, a magic ritual that has a good laugh at our attempts to separate life from art. In queer witchcraft, there must be an undoing before a doing. To reclaim our power, we have to be willing to step on some toes, and sometimes bite the hand that feeds us.