Gibson: Blogging Bloodworks

Mira Gibson’s DADDY SODA (directed by Kel Haney) will kick of Bloodworks on May 6th at 7 PM (check the Youngblood Website for details to come!)…

DADDY SODA is a dramatic play about Mary, a teenaged daughter who realizes that her quest to find her missing mother opposes her preexisting commitment to protect her younger sister from “drinking with Dad” and all the dark implications that surround it. In a town where God’s busy with people cleaner than you, this broken family discovers that rising out of the gutter may not lead to a better place.

Mira Gibson’s thoughts on writing DADDY SODA:

I was struck with the idea to write DADDY SODA last October when I became interested in “the nature of resentment”, particularly resentment born of a contradicting nature: to protect. When it comes to family and siblings, I think we all have the inherent instinct to protect, but at what point does this instinct pervert and turn against that which we are inclined to protect; at what point does active protection emotionally twist into passive resentment, and more interestingly, down what path is resentment capable of dragging us? For Mary, her instinct to protect her younger sister, Candice from their alcoholic father and his habits of “connecting” with his daughters through drinking beer, the notion of becoming resentful towards Candice is merely a kernel of Mary’s emotional drive. However my initial interest in these opposing natures, I found, had its place in the hearts of each of my characters, and became a guiding factor in the deepest levels of the story. For Mary, her resentment is hiding inside of a tightly calibrated need to escape into a fantasy that answers the question: where is Mom? Her commitment to finding Mom becomes so strong, in fact a desperate attempt, that Mary finds herself willing to drift away from Candice in order to become Mom, no matter that this choice puts Candice in a great deal of danger. Suddenly, what began as an effort to protect Candice becomes the cause of the greatest risk to Candice. Despite learning that Mom is not glowing in the Kingdom of Heaven as the daughters had envisioned, but rather writhing in the pits of Hell, Mary still continues to become Mom. This led me to another exploration in this story: what is the human capacity “to miss” and what are we willing to do in order to regain what we have lost?