Family Tree

by Erin Considine

Isabella is losing herself to Alzheimer’s. Her communication comes in repetitive stops and starts, leaving her children to untangle the roots of their past in order to make some weighted decisions about their future. Is a fresh start possible when old growth has been gnarled and broken away?

Isabella is losing herself to Alzheimer’s. Her communication comes in repetitive stops and starts, leaving her children to untangle the roots of their past in order to make some weighted decisions about their future. Is a fresh start possible when old growth has been gnarled and broken away?

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Family Tree

Recommended by

  • Dave Osmundsen: Family Tree by Erin Considine
    “

    How do we move forward when the past seems to be always holding us back? How do we deal with scorched-earth family relations? Considine doesn't offer easy answers, but she does provide us with dynamic characters and relationships. Isabella's interior monologues especially are hilarious and heartbreaking.

    How do we move forward when the past seems to be always holding us back? How do we deal with scorched-earth family relations? Considine doesn't offer easy answers, but she does provide us with dynamic characters and relationships. Isabella's interior monologues especially are hilarious and heartbreaking.

    ”
  • Leah Roth Barsanti: Family Tree by Erin Considine
    “

    This play is simply gorgeous: a family drama that is full of as much conflict as it is humor and tenderness. I could watch these characters interact for hours.

    This play is simply gorgeous: a family drama that is full of as much conflict as it is humor and tenderness. I could watch these characters interact for hours.

    ”
  • Elisabeth Giffin Speckman: Family Tree by Erin Considine
    “

    Gavin returns home at the behest of his sister to find their mother is slipping away. When home, Gavin and Calista rehash old hurts and reveal new secrets. Meanwhile Isabella, their mother, struggles to communicate with her children and shares instead her thoughts with the audience.

    I was really drawn to the character dynamics in this play, and Isabella in particular is an exciting, fresh, and yet haunting character all at once-- a role many actors would love to tackle.

    Gavin returns home at the behest of his sister to find their mother is slipping away. When home, Gavin and Calista rehash old hurts and reveal new secrets. Meanwhile Isabella, their mother, struggles to communicate with her children and shares instead her thoughts with the audience.

    I was really drawn to the character dynamics in this play, and Isabella in particular is an exciting, fresh, and yet haunting character all at once-- a role many actors would love to tackle.

    ”
View all 5 recommendations

Character Information

  • Gavin
    Gavin is strong and stylish, tall and handsome, well-employed and well-compensated for his work. Gavin is a force of nature, and he turns a phrase as if he is twisting a knife. He is proudly out of the closet after a tumultuous childhood filled with repression and occasionally violence. Gavin spends as little time as possible with the family he feels could never truly accept him. He has started over in San Francisco, and he is happy there.
    40+
    Any
    Assigned male at birth
    Can be played by:
    • Actor Age
      40s
    • Actor Gender Identity
      Man
  • Calista
    Calista is small and perpetually twenty pounds overweight (in her own estimation, if not in the eyes of others). She has had a hard time creating any kind of stability in her life, even though she has never moved farther than fifteen miles from her parents’ home. She has lost boyfriend after boyfriend, job after job. Only now, as an adult, is she starting to discover who she might be at her core. Calista lost her brother to her father’s temper, and now she is losing her mother to Alzheimer’s Disease. Calista is clinging to the only security she’s ever known.
    35+
    Any
    Cis female
    Can be played by:
    • Actor Age
      30s
    • Actor Gender Identity
      Woman
  • Isabella
    Isabella is fading away after a lifetime of fighting and loving and protecting her family. She is whip-smart like her son, kind and nurturing like her daughter, and unable to communicate anything outside of her most basic needs and desires. Isabella’s interior life is taking over her exterior connections, Alzheimer’s Disease eating away at her words and her memories.
    65+
    Any
    Cis female
    Can be played by:
    • Actor Age
      60s
    • Actor Gender Identity
      Woman

Development History

Production History

  • Professional, The Foundry, 2024