My Six Parents

Meg Buckner-Furtick

Back in antiquity, doctors did the best they could with what little knowledge of the body mankind had discovered. To fully heal, wounds would often have to be excised, cutting off infected tissue. Most sickness was "cured" by bloodletting. And aren't we always told to not remove a glass shard from the wound, lest you want to bleed? The wounds that Grief creates have to be healed in the same way: they must get bigger and carefully cared for in order to properly heal. Through storytelling methods and movement explorations, the wounds are treated and memories live on. It's a complicated web, entangling these six parents and one child in an intricate mess akin to a Lifetime movie. This production is my response, filled with the various waves and experiences that come from grief. But it is also a story of my origin and many parents. Each has left their various marks and shards in me, but not without moments of healing. From adoption to divorce. Hospital visits to marriage. Doggy kisses to unwanted adult gazes. And even from one death to the other, the ironic and morbid sense of humor that life has never ceases to amaze me. I have two birth parents whom I've never met. I have two parents who adopted me. One stepfather, later legal father. And finally, one step mother who is filled with shattered glass, constantly ripping them out to only point them my way. This is a story of pain, but mostly of memory and love.  
 

Stage Manager: Tony Harris