parsley
BY CAITLIN GEORGE
2025 IRT Theater, New York, USA
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the piece
X I would if I could.
C You could. I can’t.
Therein lies the difference.
X Not terribly different, and yet –
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.
C
My mother always used to tell me that parsley is a woman’s herb. Not the plant, that la hierba era para las mujeres. 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 tart them up, make them look more appealing, before being immediately kicked to the outskirts of the plate by whoever is wielding the fork. To later be abandoned to the compost with the leftover mess of uneaten 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. La salud femenina no es un tópico apropiado durante la comida.
The SuperGeographics have developed Parsley with support from the following institutions and residencies;
2025 IRT Theater 3B Residency, New York, USA
2024 Teatro La Memoria, Santiago, Chile
2021 Catwalk 2021 Artist Residency, New York, USA
QCR Retreat, New York, USA
2020 The NET MicroGrant
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 and New Georges. 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.
Akiko Aizawa is a New York based theater actor and teacher. As a long-time member of the SITI Company she appeared in shows such as; The Bacchae (BAM), The Trojan
Women (Getty Villa), Culture of Desire (NYTW), and Radio Macbeth (NYU Skirball
Center), all directed by Anne Bogart. As a former member of the Suzuki Company of
Toga she appeared in The Trojan Women, Dionysus, and Hatekon, among others.
Other credits: Oedipus (dir. Ianthe Demos), Hanjo (dir. Leon Ingulsrud), Suicide Forest
(dir. Aya Ogawa), and Sleep (dir. Rachel Dickstein). She is currently a member of One
Year Lease Theater Company, SITI Emeritus Artists, and American Physical Theatre
Company, and an adjunct professor at Long Island University. Originally from Akita,
Japan, she brings a rich cultural background to her work in the arts.
Akiko Aizawa
FURIES
Jackie Fox
Scenographer
Jackie is a New York based scenic and lighting designer. She believes that the best art is disruptive, subversive, and pushes us to examine the most difficult elements of our psyche. Selected lighting credits include: POTUS (City Theater), Peter and The Starcatcher (Paramount Theater), EMMA (DCPA), Helen. (La Mama), Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson - Apt 2B (Dorset Theater Festival), The Oresteia (The Juilliard School), The WOLVES (McCarter Theatre Center), Dear Jack, Dear Louise (Northlight Theatre), UNTOLD (PARA/MAR Dance Theatre), Hundred Days (Kokandy Productions). Scenic credits include: Little Mermaid (CSFAC), The Importance of Being Earnest (The New School), Pretty Fire (Omaha Community Playhouse), Do you Feel Anger (Grinnell College), Pride and Prejudice (Wagon Wheel Theatre). For more information go to jackiefoxdesigns.com
Andrea Pelegrí Kristić is an actress, translator and researcher, Ph.D. in Arts (Theatre Studies and Practices) at PUC Chile, and Romance Languages and Literatures: Spanish at University Paris Nanterre, France. She currently holds a lectureship position (Spanish Language and Literature) at École Normale Supérieure-PSL, in Paris, France. She was a postdoctoral researcher on Theatre Translation at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, funded by ANID (National Agency for Research and Development, Chilean Government). Between 2021 and 2024 she taught the theatre translation module for the Literary translation course of the Literature Department at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Her research focuses on theatrical translation, specifically on theatre translation theory and practice, as well as on the relationship between theatre historiography and translation in Chile in the 19th and 20th centuries, and digital humanities.
Andrea Pelegrí Kristić
Translator
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.
