
Unfinished Women Cry In No Man's Land While A Bird Dies In A Gilded Cage
Aishah Rahman
Full Length, Drama Characters: 5 female Unit set.
Maxine, a search and rescue pilot, returns in midwinter to her childhood home in the Adirondacks.
There she conducts a search for a girl who, while on a field trip in the mountains, was abducted by a stranger in a black pick up truck.
The search lasts for three days.
Each night Maxine must face the girl's distraught mother, Dessa, and her own grandmother, Zofia, a reclusive Polish refugee.
In sleep, Maxine is prey to nightmares and fragmented memories of a mother who abandoned her in childhood and was lost to insanity.
Cherry Jones starred Off Broadway in this powerful consideration of the notions of loss, motherhood and the vexed yearning for release.
"Emotionally powerful ... and intensely satisfying."
Seattle Times.
"Emotionally powerful...and intensely satisfying."
— Seattle Times
| Character |
|---|
| Dessa mid- to late thirties; Charlotte's mother; tough, without self-pity, and utterly focused |
| Zofia early to mid-seventies; Maxine's grandmother, Evie's mother; a Polish exile, survivor of the 1939 Nazi invasion; visionary, difficult, and wise |
| Charlotte twelve; Dessa's daughter; canny, bold, and slightly malicious |
| Evie roughly Maxine's age; Maxine's dead mother; cool, wry, and lucid |
| Maxine mid- to late thirties; a search and rescue pilot; solitary, ironic, and guarded |
Tongue Of A Bird is a American play written by Ellen Mclaughlin and published by Samuel French (2000).
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