Colic

Years ago I wrote a short scene between two sisters. They were fighting. One sister gets so upset that she calls out for her mother. The sisters then turn their attention to the space between them, where the urn with their mother’s ashes sits. “I forget mom’s dead too sometimes,” the other sister says.

This was the beginning of Colic.

I have three sisters, two brothers, and three ex-step-sisters. All my siblings are half-siblings, which is only to say that I don’t share the same two parents with any of them. Not sharing both parents with a sibling is a strange relationship. There’s something fragmentary about it. There’s a half you aren’t connected to and never will be. Half of them comes from something you don’t come from.

I spend a lot of time thinking about connections. The people I’m related to by blood, and the people I choose to be related to. My paternal cousins are my siblings. My half-sisters are my full-sisters; they’re also my friends. My best friends are my siblings. My uncle was like a father to me. My mother is both parents to me; my mother is also my father.

This play centers around people who are actively rewriting, and questioning, what their connections to each other are. They’re connected to one another in many ways; they all mean many things to one another. The important people in your life are those that mean many things to you. And, even in death, that meaning still continues to mean something. 

I’m so grateful for all the people in my life that have been a part of this play’s life. Erica, Steven, Lila, Luke, Morgan, Hannah, Albert, Brillian, Spencer, Tobin, Aella, Harry, and Kim. And our actors: their work is truly what helps me see and understand the play. So thank you Emmy, Nicole, John, Rachel, and Shelby. XOXO