Family

by Celine Song

Family is a play about being born into a violent planet. After their father's funeral, half-siblings Alice, Linus, and David sit quietly in the house they grew up in. Soon, they begin to hear, smell, taste, and see very awful things.

Family is a play about being born into a violent planet. After their father's funeral, half-siblings Alice, Linus, and David sit quietly in the house they grew up in. Soon, they begin to hear, smell, taste, and see very awful things.

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Family

Recommended by

  • Ricardo Soltero-Brown: Family

    Three siblings stuck in a "childhood" (even by fit of their clothes), equivocal to the world they've been brought into, remember, reflect, and reckon with its violent nature, while doggedly attempting, through repetitive difficulty, to accept, believe, and illuminate what good they were apparently told it has. Humor and an arguably appropriate irreverence veil a deeply pained dislocation of existence, engendered by an abusive father; his proportions are of Greek myth, pertinent to child survivors of such houses and upbringings. With mysterious, maddening, cyclical perspectives, they dare to...

    Three siblings stuck in a "childhood" (even by fit of their clothes), equivocal to the world they've been brought into, remember, reflect, and reckon with its violent nature, while doggedly attempting, through repetitive difficulty, to accept, believe, and illuminate what good they were apparently told it has. Humor and an arguably appropriate irreverence veil a deeply pained dislocation of existence, engendered by an abusive father; his proportions are of Greek myth, pertinent to child survivors of such houses and upbringings. With mysterious, maddening, cyclical perspectives, they dare to play games with an ever-shifting reality that is under an uncertain control.

  • Mark Thomas Johnson: Family

    Intoxicating and wonderful.

    Intoxicating and wonderful.

  • Emma Goldman-Sherman: Family

    This play goes to the heart of traumatic family life in a beautiful, darkly comic, sculpted way. I love Song's facility with language, image and composition. She writes gorgeously for characters with massive subtext. This is probably one of the closest theatrical experiences I've had reflecting my own family life. And perhaps this means I project when I say that Family feels universal, but the play is so alive and open to a multiplicity of interpretations and avenues of connection, I challenge others to see if it feels universal to them.

    This play goes to the heart of traumatic family life in a beautiful, darkly comic, sculpted way. I love Song's facility with language, image and composition. She writes gorgeously for characters with massive subtext. This is probably one of the closest theatrical experiences I've had reflecting my own family life. And perhaps this means I project when I say that Family feels universal, but the play is so alive and open to a multiplicity of interpretations and avenues of connection, I challenge others to see if it feels universal to them.

View all 4 recommendations

Development History

  • Type Reading, Organization Ars Nova Play Group, Year 2014
  • Type Reading, Organization Potomac Theatre Project's Afterdark Reading Series, Year 2014
  • Type Workshop, Organization Signature Theater Studio, "New Works Now", Year 2014
  • Type Reading, Organization Space on Ryder Farm, Year 2013