"Daughters” delivers generational humor and drama
October 2 , 2006
The themes of family and food run through the Theatre Arts Department’s upcoming drama—themes that perhaps couldn’t be more appropriate for the play’s Homecoming weekend opening on Oct. 5. “Daughters” gives audiences a glimpse of four generations of Italian-American women as they cook and cope in their Brooklyn kitchen in the mid 1980s.
The play “deals with life, death—and cannelloni—as it finds humor in a dire situation,” said Theatre Arts Chair Kim Barber. The New York Daily News called it “one of the best written plays in years. It is funny and harrowing at almost the same time.”
Tracy Riggs, Adjunct Professor of Theatre Arts and the show’s director, was instantly drawn to the drama.
“I have an Italian side to my family,” she said. “So when I read this play, I could hear it, see it—and almost taste it.”
Her all-female cast includes junior Whittney Millsap, sophomore Ali Grieb, junior Rachael Pike, sophomore Julia Jones and Linda Buchanan, Vice President and Dean for Student Life and Retention.
Jones plays the youngest member of the DiAngelo clan. “People will walk away loving these characters,” she said. “It’s as if you just peeked in the window and caught a glimpse of their lives.”
As a result, the audience gets a revealing and sometimes raw look at the push and pull of a family’s interactions.
“The relationships between these women are just so real,” said Pike, who plays a DiAngelo daughter. “There are so many tensions between the generations … yet, these people are the ones who are with you at the end of the day.”
According to DiAngelo mom Ali Grieb, much of the show’s humor flows subtly out of the roller coaster ride of those relationships.
“It shows how in serious situations, sometimes you just have to laugh at life.”
At one point in the dialogue, Grieb’s character says that she spends half of her life cooking and the other half worrying, one of the many moments that hints at gender and generational roles.
The playwright illustrates “all the hats that women have to wear,” said Millsap, who also plays a DiAngelo daughter. “You often don’t realize all the roles that women take on.”
The show examines those roles through the lens of the changing generations, exposing traditions kept and traditions discarded.
Dean Linda Buchanan plays the nonagenarian grandmother on one end of the spectrum, providing the counterpoint for granddaughter Cetta, who is struggling to find her place in her gender, family and world.
The cast has immersed itself in Italian-American culture as part of its preparation for the production—including enjoying Italian food. Since the show takes place in the family kitchen, there is always some sort of pasta on the set.
“The audience is going to be hungry when they leave,” said Riggs. “Last night, the cast went through an entire pan of lasagna.”
“Daughters” opens Thursday, Oct. 5, and runs through Tuesday, Oct. 10. The Sunday, Oct. 8, performance is a matinee beginning at 2:30 p.m. All other performances begin at 7:30 p.m. For more information or tickets, call the box office Monday through Friday from noon to 5 p.m. at 706-880-8080.
