In Despair

NOTE: This work is an extract from a larger piece

SYNOPSIS: With her estranged husband away on business so often, new mother Katherine finds herself exploring parts of her identity that she didn’t want to admit were possible. As her relationship with her maid Joanne grows stronger, secrets and confessions are exposed. It’s important for Michael not to discover the truth about his wife because otherwise, not everyone will make it out alive…

PROLOGUE:

The inertia of a house in the late 1980s is visible on the left side of the stage. Inside, is a dining room table with a family portrait hung on the wall behind with a clock near it, frozen on the time 18:23. On the table are two wine glasses and candles. The room is dimly lit and a pink crib lays in the corner. The right side of the stage is in darkness. 

It is an early evening in the middle of July. At the table sits a young brunette woman called Katherine who’s in her late twenties, slowly rocking her daughter to sleep. In the distance, sirens can be heard along with a broken tick of a clock. When the sirens drown out, Katherine gets up and places her daughter in the crib. 

KATHERINE:

(slowly walks away from the crib and picks up a wine glass):

I hate the word perfect. I don’t know why, but there’s something about it that makes my insides ache. And I especially hate it when you add ‘family’ to the end of it. The ‘perfect’ family. People automatically assume that if you live in a nice house, have a stable and well-earning job, are happily married to a man and have two children, one son and one daughter, you represent the ‘perfect family’. But what if having all that isn’t what you’d call a ‘perfect’ family? What if, truthfully, the thought of having all of that makes your skin crawl? 

To some, a ‘perfect family’ is when someone has a secret that’ll change everything. When you constantly fight with your husband, or you don’t want to meet society’s or your husband’s expectations of having two children, the pain and suffering of bringing one into the world suits me just fine. 

Society nowadays has created this image that because everything on the outside looks fine, you must be a part of a ‘perfect family’. The amount of times that word has been thrown around has made it sound more like an insult rather than a compliment. But what happens when you look on the inside? What happens when you realise that all families are filled with hate as well as love? Families are filled with anger, drama, secrets, despair, even. What will society think then? Because, to me, having a dysfunctional family is my idea of ‘perfect’. 

But when you look, like really look, is there even such thing as a ‘perfect family?’ Because behind closed doors, my family was far from perfect, but isn’t everyone's? 

Lights fade out on the rest of the stage.