1. Challenging the Perfect Family
2. Key Texts: We are going to use the statistics from Mormon Women navigate pressures around work, family and employment. We are then going to use the Gender Roles video to transition to the next story.
Personal Stories: We are going to tell Macy’s story of her in her Marriage and Family class as a story that we are going to tell. After we talk about working mother’s we are then going to talk about Sarah and her family’s experience with mental illness. We are going to end with Becca’s story about perfection and the complex it can give us.
Audio or Video Interview: We are going to use the interviews to create chaos to show how difficult it can be to create a perfect family.
Audio and Aural Track: Creating an overwhelming amount of sounds for the transitions between the stories. This will be from the interviews and other sound bytes that we find about families.
Visual and Video Track: We want to be able to create a visual of families around the kitchen table. We could have projections of different kitchen in the background to show that we are now telling the stories of a different family.
Embodied Track: We will be embodying ourselves and Macy will be telling her story, Sarah hers, and Becca hers. The other actors can embody people in the story and visual show what they are feeling.
Script
Materials: Nametags (Mom, Dad, Daughter, Brother, Brother, Sister, Son, Child), Audio (Dinner Table, What is a perfect family?, phone vibrates, Does the perfect family exist), Video (Conference funny, old family footage, lighthearted family things)
Mom(Divorce): Michaella
Daughter(Divorce): Macy
Laura(physically): Maddie
Insurance: Becca
Mom (Laura): Maegan
Dad (Laura): MarKaye
Brothers (Laura): Sarah, Macy
Sister (Laura): Michaella
Dad(Storm Out): Sarah
Son(Storm Out): Maegan
Mom (Storm Out): MarKaye
Child (Storm Out): Maddie
An empty dinner table (could just be fold up) sits in the middle of the stage as music begins. A montage of old footage and audio regarding family dinners plays as actors bring out a tablecloth and chairs, sets the table with a few plates, pretends to eat, and stacks plates back together at the end of the table. The audio builds to a cacophony, then everything goes silent. All but one actor leaves the stage.
Mom age 33. Daughter age 12.
Mom: Daughter! Come help set the table.
Daughter (offstage): Coming.
Mom and daughter begins setting the table.
Daughter: Where is dad?
Mom: Oh, don’t worry about that.
Daughter: Is he staying at work late today.
Silence.
Mom: Can you grab the salt and pepper please.
Daughter grabs that salt and pepper.
Mom: Thank you.
Both sit at the table. And they both begin eating.
Daughter: I know when you are not telling me something.
Mom: Just eat your dinner.
Daughter: Fine.
Mom: Thank you.
They eat.
Daughter(teasing): But if you just told me then I would know.
Mom: If I tell you it will ruin our dinner.
Daughter: Good thing I’m already done!
Mom: *sigh* Your dad left last night. And I am not sure where he is.
Daughter: He probably just went to work…
Mom: Baby he didn’t—
Daughter: You are wrong. He is just at work.
Mom: He packed up all his clothes
Daughter: You are lying!
Mom: I don’t think he is coming back—
Daughter: Why would he leave me?! He loves me why would he leave!
Mom: It is going to be okay. I love you—
Daughter: I hate you! You made him leave!
Mom: Baby
Daughter breaks down and Mom holds her for a moment.
Mom: We are going to be okay.
Daughter: Doesn’t he want us?
Daughter leaves. Mother turns upstage and begins writing in a notebook. Mom leaves the stage.
Transition: Voiceover of her journal entry.
June, 28th 2014
I hate my husband. I had to look in my child’s eyes and tell her that her father was not coming home. I hate him because he made me tell her.
He left me with the pieces that I was not ready to pick up.
I wanted to make it work. I needed to make it work.
And then he just got up and left like a coward.
Maybe I’m the coward.
I’ve dreamed my whole life that I would have this perfect family with a mom and a dad who loved each other. Then there would be kids. So many kids that you would forget all their names.
I’m embarrassed that dream is not my life. That I am not a good enough wife or a good enough mother to make this dream a reality.
I just wanted to have my perfect family.
Mom leaves the stage. Audio Clip: “What is a perfect family?” over family videos. Two people enter, sit across
from each other at the table, one is clearly being interviewed, but instead of speaking we hear Laura’s voiceover as the two actresses mime a conversation.
Laura: Yeah, one of the other challenges my family has faced growing up is that pretty much all the kids in our family are in some form or another disabled. That wasn’t really obvious from the start, except for me
Visual Cue: Family video
Laura: I’ve got SMA and I’m a power wheelchair user, right? And my parents tried to come up with all the ways to have as normal a life as possible. Children need to be able to move around to develop properly while they’re young… and that wasn’t something I was able to do which could have severely limited my development except that my dad
Dad comes, stands by Laura at the table
Laura: and of course my mom also
Mom follows out and sits in front of Dad
Laura: were so committed to helping me have that mobility and that normal life. He likes to talk about when they were working with doctors and insurance companies, when I was a very very small child, to get me a wheelchair. Practically unheard of at the time, I was 2 years old. And my dad says he was on the phone with the insurance company at the time…
Dad picks up phone and is talking to insurance, interviewer stands in as insurance worker
Insurance Worker: Uhh, sir? We’re really not in the habit of providing power wheelchairs to two year olds
Mom: That’s when he straightened up and said
Laura: and while he’s saying this I can see the little smirk he totally would’ve had on his face at the time
Dad: Well, this is going to be an exception for you isn’t it?
Interviewer/Insurance worker exits
Laura: And that’s just kinda that attitude my parents had when I was little until I was old enough to adopt the perseverance for myself… we’ve kind of had to develop that idea as the rest of the family has gotten older. My older brother has aspergers
Brother joins family at table, scribbling something in a notebook
Laura: which is a mild form of autism, he’s very, very, intelligent and hyper-focuses on some things. It’s just that struggle, again, at having to come at things from a different direction. My little brother with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, and also my older sister
Brother and Sister come to table as well, holding hands, sister is helping brother with something
Laura: which it turns out, we found out relatively recently, she also has autism, we weren’t really aware of it until just a few years ago. She’s stopped masking as much, she’s started acting the way she feels and it’s been quite an adjustment
Sister gets frustrated with 2nd brother, circles around to watch 1st brother drawing in notebook.
Laura: Just going through that process one more time of figuring out how we can take these non-ideal things and make them work for our family so we can build these really strong relationships that can last us a lifetime, and hopefully after.
I’d like a kind of auditory tone shift here. All but two actors leave the stage. These actors plays Dad and Son. The notebook and a jacket has been left at the table.
Dad: Come here, I need to talk to you.
Son: What do you want? I didn’t even do anything?
Dad: You can’t act that way towards your mom.
Son: I didn’t even do anything.
Dad: She is your mother for goodness sake. She deserves better than this.
Son: I already said I didn’t do anything.
Dad: You need to go apologize.
Son: Screw that.
Dad: Go now.
Son: Fine, I will go. I know that I’m not wanted here.
Son starts packing the notebook and jacket into a bag.
Son: You can go apologize to Mom for kicking her son out of the house.
Dad: That’s not what I meant. Listen when I am talking to you.
Son finishes packing and grabbing the bag.
Son: Screw you and your perfect family. I don’t want a part of it anymore.
Son leaves. Dad runs after son.
Dad: Get back in here.
Sound Cue: Car driving off.
Dad exits. Mom sits at the table. Phone continues to vibrate she checks it hopeful and ends up being disappointed. This happens three times.
Sound Cue: Phone Vibrating.
Visual: Time lapses or Images of seasons ends with Christmas tree or Christmas image.
Child: Is he coming home for Christmas?
Mom: He was supposed to but he hasn’t been answering my calls. That probably means he changed his mind and isn’t coming.
Child: Oh…that’s too bad.I was hoping he would come.
Mom: Maybe you should call him. Even if he doesn’t answer you can tell him you miss him. He always listens to his messages.
Visual: Time lapses or Images of seasons ends with summer image.
Child: Hey mom, you coming to the barbeque? The Smith’s said they got like $500 worth of fireworks!
Mom: Yup! I’ll be on my way in a second, let me just grab the potato salad from the fridge.
While turning to walk away, phone rings…
Mom: Hello?
SON VO: Mom?
Sound Effect: Phone Ring—Voice Over
The following will be silent. Whoever is playing the Mother will act as if she is overjoyed and then a moment of heartbreak as her son then tells her that he is not coming. She smiles again and then hangs up the phone.
Mom (to child): He’s not coming home.
Child: He’s not coming home.
Other members of family come on repeating “He’s not coming home.”
Mom(Stepping Forward): But at least he’s alive.
Cut to black. Everyone is in a row on stage now. One by one they step forward to share their 30 second stories, then head off stage
Sarah: Sean Mackintosh grew up in a mormon family in Lehi, Utah. Throughout his growing up years, he slowly came to a life-altering realization: He was gay. After grappling with this discovery, he came to the difficult decision that he needed to tell his parents, so he did. At first there was anger, confusion, heartbreak, and misunderstanding. His family relationships, especially with his dad, were strained. One day, in a moment of anger, his Dad shouted at Sean, “How could you choose this?” Sean, bewildered, softly replied, “Dad. I didn’t choose this.” That small exchange, that raw moment, changed everything. His dad began to understand Sean and his experience. He saw him for who he was. It took a long time for healing to occur, but finally the Mackintosh family came together again. Of the experience, Sean said that all he needed was to know his family loved him. And they did. Sean said of his new family situation: “We may have differences, but at the end of the day we’re still family.”
Michaella: “I have a box tucked in the back of a closet with his sonogram, a white Winnie the Pooh onesie he never wore, a statue of a baby angel, a sympathy card and the book Gone to Soon: The Life and Loss of Infants and Unborn Children by Sherri Devashrayee Wittwer. There is no other earthly record of his short life. Some might even debate whether he had been a life at all. Only the parents of a miscarried or stillborn child understand the magnitude of the bonding, which occurs in the womb and the loss felt at the death of a fetus. I was surprised at the magnitude of loss for a child I had never seen with earthly eyes. After my stillborn child died, I grieved alone.”
Maegan:
Maddie:
Macy: My mom and dad met at a college party and got pregnant with me. They never lived together and they definitely never loved each other. My dad never cared about me and my mom was a drug addict and an alcoholic. Now I talk to my dad once a year and my mom is gone. Now I’m married in the temple and responsible for creating my own family, when I have no idea what family actually means. My husband has a perfect family as far as I can tell so we argue a lot about what our future family should look like. But I guess all I can do is my best.
MarKaye:I don't think anyone could be a better example to me of how to be a good human being than my uncle David. I remember going on a short hike up the Wasatch Mountains in Cache Valley where I'm from when I was pretty young, and talking to my uncle David in depth for the first time. I was so amazed by him. He was so kind and thoughtful and intentional in the way that he lived, and he continually had to remind me to slow down and take my time so that we wouldn't leave people behind us in the dirt. It wasn't about getting there quickly, but about getting there together, he told me.
My uncle David and his partner Mo currently live in Oakland California, David is a doctor and Mo works for apple. Mo is kind and gentle, quiet until you get to know him. He's a gentleman by every definition of the word and he's a welcome part of our family.
I remember the image at my grandmother's funeral of Dave and Mo shoulder to shoulder with my grandfather, watching my grandmother in her casket together, leaning on each other for support. My mother commented on how beautiful it was to see them that way, knowing it had been hardest for my grandfather when my uncle had come out. I think about that often, and how grateful I am that Mo is a part of our family. There’s a lot I still don’t know about our family’s journey and how Mo eternally fits in, but there’s one thing I do know. It's about getting there together.
Becca: The Savior was not born an all-knowing being. He received power “grace for grace.” He went through the veil and had to learn he was Jehovah. He received the fullness of power after showing his perfect obedience; after the Resurrection. Our gospel is a lot like the Evangelical church, where you just have to confess that Christ will save you in order to be saved. The only difference is instead of confession, we covenant through ordinances. The rest of the “works” we do are just to show Christ that we love him and appreciate all that he has done for us. In order to be fully devoted to him, the scriptures say we “marry” him- when we do so, his attributes slowly become ours, just like in any marriage. We will never live up to the light and truth we receive. But when we are obedient, we get more truth. We need to grow grace by grace just as Jesus Christ did. Repentance is part of obedience. What Christ asks is complete commitment to him, not a life without mistakes. Instead of focusing on perfection, we should focus on being loyal to the Lord. Drop your perfection complex and develop a loyalty complex.
Becca goes to sit at the table. Closing sequence/audio begins playing. Does the perfect family exist? clip. Actors all join the stage again, this time they’re bringing food with them, paper plates. The audience is invited to come eat dinner ‘on stage’.
