How do you win when the deck is stacked against you? And in times like these,

what was it your mother used to say? Does he really expect you to listen while

he is going on about snails? Are you selfish?

 

Performed in English and Spanish, Parsley is a snapshot of the same two people, C & X, across three distinct points in history; then, before, & ago. Each era is different - some have corsets while others boast maternity leave - but for C nothing much changes. Her mother is still dead. Her sisters, gone or run off. Her brother, away. Her overbearing ‘over-caffinated mall-cop’ type uncle, still imminent. And as always X is here, needing. Always he needs more of her than she wants to give; his baby, her house, the kingdom. 

 

“X - Te amo realmente. Te amo realmente and I want a baby. ¿En qué momento esas dos cosas dejaron de ir de la mano?”

 

Is that really too much to ask? He didn’t choose to be this either but now that we’re here, here we are. Where else is there to go? 

 

The space between the hope of expectation and the disappointment of reality creates a chasm between them which they try desperately to cross. As they navigate social constraints against their own ambitions, they exhaust the options of custom and end up wrecked and ruined. 

 

Well, she does. He’ll be fine. 

Parsley by Caitlin George & directed by Jonathan Taikina Taylor is a dissection of the theatrical forms and stories that were told to us as all of history. We dig through the graveyard of the fallen and forgotten women towards forgotten knowns, greedy Generals, and our mothers’ fury. Working backwards we scrape off the plaque of canon to exhume what power is in a woman’s herb.

​