Development workshop | Santiago, Chile March 2024
Development workshop | Santiago, Chile March 2024
Parsley/Perejil
BY CAITLIN GEORGE
C is a woman. X is a man.
We meet these two characters across three different eras: Now, Then, and Before.
Each era is different, and yet not much has changed. Regardless of time, they end in the same place. X is alone, and C is left with no more cards to play.
We are sent backwards in time through the eras in search of a better ending.
Throughout history, female characters who have lost their virtue, honour, or social standing have regained their value through sacrificing their own lives. This trope of the fallen woman recurs throughout western canon. We live in a culture built out of these myths, where feminine strength can only be validated through self sacrifice.
Parsley/Perejil looks at how these inherited narratives dictate our understanding of feminine worth, and shape the way we walk together through the world.
the piece
X. I would if I could.
C. You could. I can’t.
Therein lies the difference.
X. Not terribly different, and yet –
C
My mother always used to tell me that parsley is a woman’s herb. Not the plant, that the herb was for women. I’ve no idea what that means.
As far as I can tell parsley is a bit of green people put on top of one-pot meals in restaurants, to dress them up, make them look more attractive, before being immediately kicked to the outskirts of the plate by whoever is wielding the fork. Only to later be abandoned to the compost with the leftover mess of scraps.
I don’t think that’s the parallel she was trying to draw.
I doubt she even knew what she meant. I’d ask her, my sisters and I would ask her, we never really got an answer. I couldn’t tell if she didn’t want to elaborate because my dad was there or because we were invariably eating dinner. Men aren’t great with talk of blood and other things that might ooze out of bodies. Women’s health is not appropriate dinner conversation.
in development
The SuperGeographics have developed Parsley with support from the following institutions and residencies;
2024 Teatro La Memoria, Santiago, Chile
2021 Catwalk 2021 Artist Residency, New York, USA
QCR Retreat, New York, USA
2020 The NET MicroGrant
2024 Teatro La Memoria, Santiago, Chile
Caitlin George is an Australian playwright, actor, and theatre-maker based out of Melbourne. Drawn to theatre by its collision of the possible and the practical, her work is driven by a compulsion for gender equality and a love for the explosive potential of language. As a playwright, her curiosity lies in reshaping our inherited narratives to examine cultural assumptions of gendered social roles. Through investigating myth, storytelling structures, and unsung histories, her plays question where we are and where we can go next. She has worked across south-eastern Australia, within the United States, and internationally in India, Mexico, and Canada. Her play Helen. premiered last year at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in association with En Garde Arts. She most recently performed her own piece CAKE: a journey of fluid and frosting at The Chain, NYC. Caitlin is a company member of The SuperGeographics and a graduate of the Federation University’s Arts Academy, Australia, and the SITI Conservatory.
Caitlin George
Playwright
creative team
Jonathan
Taikina Taylor
Director
Jonathan Taikina Taylor is an actor, director, and movement artist based in New York. As a director, his work has been seen across the United States, Chile, Mexico, Sweden, Nepal, and India. As Artistic Director of The SuperGeographics, he has directed: Un Castillo de Cartas, Panic Everything’s Fine, Bacchic, Moving Mouths, RePlay: Shelter Island, and Signal. Jonathan has performed with Anikaya Dance, Kairos Dance Theatre, and En Garde Arts. BFA in Theater Arts from Boston University and an MA in International Relations and Global Justice from Brooklyn College. Jonathan is an Associate Artist of SITI Company. He teaches Suzuki & Viewpoints at The Atlantic, NYU, and The New School.
Violeta Picayo is a bilingual Cuban-American director/choreographer and actor. She believes that imagination is our greatest tool for compassion and social change, and the theater is an essential place to practice this both as audience and artist. Violeta has directed world premiere productions including Helen. (SuperGeographics, En Garde Arts, La Mama) and The Strangers Came Today (Society, New Ohio). NYC performance credits include: The Medium (BAM, SITI Company), War of the Worlds (SITI Co.), Three Little Girls Down a Well (Under the Radar @ The Public), Evelyn Brown (La MaMa), Sense and Sensibility (Bedlam), Julius Caesar (Pocket Universe). She has worked regionally throughout the US at the American Repertory Theater, Portland Center Stage, the Fisher Center, City Theatre, and internationally in Argentina, Chile, England, Greece, India, Scotland. Violeta is a company member of The SuperGeographics and an associate artist of SITI Company. She is the inaugural recipient of SDCF's Abe Burrows Award, and is a proud graduate of Vassar College, the National Theater Institute, and SITI Company's Conservatory.
Violeta Picayo
C
Juan Diego
Bonilla
X
Juan Diego Bonilla is an actor from Chile with a Masters degree in Documentary Cinema. He has worked as an actor with Compañía Tercer Asbstracto in “Atacama” (Selected in International Festival Teatro a Mil, 2015), "Bermuda" (2016), “Tempo” (2018), “Azul” (Watermill Center AIR, 2018), with Darshan Teatro in “Casi Normales” (2023), “Cabaret” (2024). Other theater credits includes Chejov (2014), “The House of Cards” (2018), “Punto Ciego” (2019), “La Formula Shakespeare” (winner of the Certamen Infantil at Festival Internacional de Teatro Clasico de Almagro, 2019), Cuerpo de Lewy (2024). Director of the theater company Cia de Subsuelo in Chile with “Bacantes” (Festival de Teatro Joven de Las Condes, 2019), “No Llorar” (2022), and upcoming “H!” (2024). Recently he has published as a co-author the book “Entre actuar y performar” and premiered his first short documentary “Casatrans” in Amor International Film Festival.
the company
The SuperGeographics create bold new work which exchange images and ideas, challenge form, and build community across cultures. This means that we pull from lots of sources, different art and theater forms from around the world, historical research, pop culture across cultures, and stuff we make up. We aim to create plays which would look ridiculous and sound silly on Film/TV because they are highly athletic, textually bold, and intellectually rigorous; engaging thoughts which challenge us. This is possible because we collaborate with artists & thinkers from disparate cultures and practices including South America, Oceania, Europe, and Southeast Asia. This decentralized making model allows us to uplift pervasively marginalized perspectives by centralizing them in the work, even when the work might include artists from traditionally dominant cultures. We use words like ‘collision’ to describe the process of collaboration across cultures of the rehearsal room. Because inside these carefully considered spaces we are able to work like a car crash testing site; throwing everything at a question, seeing what sticks when it hits the wall, and analyzing the results with scientific specificity.