An UnDutiful Daughter is largely drawn from journals I recorded thirty and forty years ago. I had, even then, imagined writing a play based on these experiences. It has taken these many years, and my engagement in theatrical presentations on the island, to finally bring this intention into practice. Set in the “City of Angels” (Los Angeles) in the 1970s and 1980s, the play portrays the conflicts within a Jewish family as they navigate the drama that ensues. Amongst the themes that are explored are political and feminist consciousness, family estrangement and betrayal, heterosexism and homophobia and the potential for reconciliation that extends through time and even beyond death.
This was a time of societal and political turbulence, anti-discrimination and anti-war resistance and radical, even revolutionary, change. Not unlike the world in which we now live, it shows the power of social movements, the linking of the personal and with the political, confrontations of discrimination and violence and the courage that it takes to live one’s life authentically and consciously.
It is my ardent intention that this play inspires present and future generations of people to tell their own stories and to contribute to the full representation of marginalized voices and experiences.
WomenWriting 