SUITCASE PLAY
It's 4:30AM. Ricky must catch a flight in 90 minutes for freshman college move in. (Ricky hasn't started packing.)
Sleep deprived and trapped in Ricky's pig pen of a bed room, a family of resentful, horrible communicators and out-of-touch "artists" must come together for the first time in forever to get Ricky out the door for their next chapter. Along the way, they’re forced to confront the endless crap they’ve shoved under the bed.
Suitcase Play, a 90 minute family dramady, grapples with the internalized misogyny festering in mother-daughter relationships and the beautiful atrocities that bloom from being raised by actors. Secrets unravel as this fractured family races against time to say the things they never could say, and do the things they never could do. God they want to love so badly. They’re really trying. Just, ugh. Sarcasm is sooo much easier.
Dripping with gender fuckery, queer discoveries, spontaneous haircuts, titty-tape, delicious guilt, and decadent regret, Suitcase Play shines a light on an actor household overflowing with wigs, songs, accents, breakdowns, and, at times, a sprinkle of sincerity.
I'm convinced a daughter's lifelong purpose is to understand their mother. This play is me scratching the surface.
my first full-length play. In other words, the first taste.
I haven't looked back.
Suitcase Play was developed at Northwestern University under the guidance of Julie Marie Myatt.
Pictured below, the 2023 Northwestern Reading Series.
Cast included Veronica Szafoni as Ricky, Nastia Goddard as Jen, Lena Moore as Rosie, Kieran Rowe as Rob, Lucy Lewis as Gremlin.
Director: Frances Mary McKittrick. Producer: Lexi Yoon Kim, Vertigo Productions. Dramaturg: Ani Kabillo. Photos: Ani Kabillo.
