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Launch: This Is My Office and Notes on My Mother’s Decline by Andy Bragen
March 3, 2022 @ 7:00 pm–8:00 pm
March 3rd
7pm
7pm
McNally Jackson Seaport
RSVP Required – see below
“These plays are searingly honest and tender, honoring real people without the usual claptrap and artifice in what we often call realism. In a sense, Andy has invented a new form in these two plays, what I might call a kind of death-mask play. Don’t worry, though, if you feel you might be felled by the macabre—there is plenty of compassion and humor here that will get you through the long night.”—Sarah Ruhl, from the Foreword
In these two newly published plays, Andy Bragen examines the intimacies and shadows that exist between parent and child. In This Is My Office, a guided tour through an empty office becomes the unexpected portal to a forgotten New York and a father’s legacy. We come face-to-face with a narrator who finds his way through doubt, soul sickness, and doughnut cravings by telling you a story. Not the one he meant to tell, but a richer one about family, redemption, and love. The autobiographical Notes on My Mother’s Decline chronicles the final days of a woman’s life. Late at night, while his baby daughter sleeps, a son takes notes on his mother’s daily life and scenes from their complicated relationship. Two blocks away, his mother naps, smokes, reads, and drinks coffee, an existence shaped by ever-encroaching confines. Bragen plumbs silences and one-sided conversations to ask, How do we care for those we love, and what does it take to live with—and without—them?
The evening will include readings of excerpts from both plays, followed by a Q&A with Andy and Playco’s Founding Producer Kate Loewald, and a book signing with Andy. The excerpts will feature performers from the original casts, including Caroline Lagerfelt, who starred in Notes on My Mother’s Decline.
We ask that all guests show proof of vaccination and wear masks on the night.