ABOVE: THE O'BRIEN MALES, CIRCA 1924
RIGHT: KATIE MCGERR WITH BROWNIE
MEMORY
IN OBJECTS, IN PLACES
With used furniture you cannot be emotional" - so says Gregory Solomon a couple of times in The Price.
The research of time lost, made famous by Marcel Proust, is, in fact, a completely emotion-driven affair. The objects and places of our past can encapsulate indelible moments, a mixture of pain and comfort, joy, continuity, endings, a sense of who we are today.
The objects and places of our memories have a life of their own. We can be confronted with them materially - having to look at them again, deal with them, think about their future destination, or they simply live in our minds.
But they are there. After all, "lives are lived through china dogs or well-thumbed books, families held together by a letter or a pipe, identities formed through pasts not forgotten."
We've asked cast members of The Price, as well as the staff and board members of Long Wharf Theatre, to share their memories of an object or place that speaks volumes (or just a nuance) about who they are today.
Here are some excerpts:
The tall and slender porcelain dancer dressed in a floor-length blue dress sits on top of the china cabinet in the dining room. Not sure if it's ballet or something modern, but she certainly holds her pose delicately (is she aware of her own fragility?)
"I think you should leave me that doll Mom," I shout, before I realize the morbidity of this statement.
"Put you name on the bottom" she calls back, without any hesitation.
"What?"
"Put your initials on the bottom, or a sticker. So people will know who gets it what when I die."
- Jacob Stoebel, Senior Education Resident
"Last year I drove by my late aunt's house, where her adult son still lives. My last memory of visiting the house was 25 years ago when she was dying of lung cancer.
"I was stunned to see her old car still parked in the driveway - the light blue Buick, circa 1970, was so uniquely hers. All of her negative energy toward me came flooding back, like a punch in the gut."
- Barbara Kagan, Graphics Director
Hand crank cheese grater
and plastic turkey baster
ceramic espresso set
with broken handle.
- Alice-Anne Harwood, Manager of Institutiononal Giving
"We have this green three-seater sofa at home. We bought it when we lived in England but it has traveled around the world with us, in two homes in Singapore and now back in India.
"It has been the spot where I cuddled with my first boyfriend, where my sister and her friends practiced headstands, and where my dog makes himself at home when he feels cold, despite not being allowed on sofas.
"It has become such a part of our family that one year, my dad bought my mom a painting from a local gallery because it depicted a family lounging on a green sofa, which you can see as you sit on our green sofa.
"When I was younger, I used to always ask that if we moved around so much, then which place was actually home. And my mom would tell me that home is where the family is.
"Which is true, but even more so when we're all together again, lounging in the living room, watching TV, fighting for a spot on the old and crummy green sofa."
- Deeksha Gaur, Assistant Managing Director
"My grandfather's globe is still there in my grandmother's home and it is his and mine, a world already explored."
- Steve Scarpa, PR manager
"My grandfather hand-built a cedar chest when he was young.
"He gave my mother the cedar chest after her 16th birthday. When I turned 16, she gave it to me; when my first born daughter turns 16, I will give it to her.
"What I find special about it is that my mother had me 2 1/2 months after her 16th birthday. When she was about to have me, my grandmother (who my mom lived with at that point because my grandmother and grandfather were divorced) wanted my mom to give the baby up for adoption. My grandfather, however, was very supportive and brought my mom to live with him for the first few years of my life.
"To me, the cedar chest kind of exists as a memento to my grandfather's supporting my mother's pregnancy and my birth, and I am (of course) deeply grateful."
- Tracey Hibbard, Associate Production Manager
"My father's encyclopedias. My grandmother's pink kitchen table."
- Beatrice Basso, dramaturg
"I didn't like to leave my stuffed dogs home alone while I went to pre-school, so my father let me bring this one (named Brownie) along, provided I took care not to lose her in the subway.
"As soon as we passed through the turnstile, I would tighten my grip: one hand holding Father's; the other, holding Brownie by the scruff of her neck."Brownie never got lost, but her fur is missing where my thumb and forefingers used to hold on."
- Katie McGerr, Literary Resident
". . . detailed crochet work representing the details of our past and present lives."
- Annie Di Martino, Director of Education
"The grouping of O'Brien males taken around 1924 consists of the grandfather I never met and his 7 sons in descending order of age.
"My father is the youngest, at the far left. I'm not sure who marked the names. We found it like that, in the flooded basement."
- George O'Brien, Board Member
"A few years ago I was the last overnight visitor to a house that'd been in my family for a few hundred years . . . my relatives were born and died in those old beds, rooms.
"In the attic were trunks filled with old Civil War uniforms, flapper dresses, old lace . . . and the old house was rotting. Sad, but I could still feel all the life that had happened there, when the world was a very different place.
"My aunt gave me many of the oil studies that my namesake, Katherine, painted in the 1880s; she also played the guitar, and died at my age, of TB. I have her tambourine, her ornamental hair comb.
"I was the 12th bride to wear the family dress, fifth generation.
"I love the funny old things I have from that house more than anything, they connect me to a past I was never part of, but is in my DNA, somewhere. It is so bitter, the reminder of mortality, of time moving on . . . but comforting because I can lean against those who came before me. "
- Kate Forbes, actor (Esther in The Price)
We invite you to send your own short memory of an object or place that has affected you. Email us at: beatrice.basso@longwharf.org and a selection of your memories will be added to this section of OFFSTAGE ONLINE.
