Griefknot

Synopsis

Griefknot is a 6 character 2-act play set in present-day Brooklyn. Leah, white, a secular Jew and a literary critic has been on her own after her parents’ premature deaths – her fathers by suicide after her mother died. She and Marvin, Sr. a prominent Black author, mid-40’s, who has had past struggles with alcohol fall in love. Marvin is a single parent to his young son, Marvin, Jr (Marvel), who is immediately drawn to Leah. Marvin’s mother Florence, a deeply Christian Bajan woman who has been helping Marvin raise Marvel, is not.

Years pass and Marvin and Leah have a child. Marvin is dying. He asks Marvel, now 21, and his half-sister, Alice, to take care of an increasingly fragile Leah who is drinking, unable to deal with his impending death. Marvin tells his half-sister of his fears that her drinking will lead Florence to try to take 9-year-old Charlie away from Leah and leave the family to unravel.

When the play begins Leah, Marvel, Alice, and Florence are clearing up from Marvin’s memorial service. Grief is shaping everyone and tensions between Leah and Florence run particularly high. Later that night, Leah, untethered and drunk, has an explosive interaction with Marvel, witnessed by Florence, that threatens to undo the family. The next morning, a desperate Leah flees, telling no one where she is going. Her departure heightens underlying conflicts between Alice, her mother, and Marvel. As the day turns to night, secrets are uncovered that allow hope that the family can remain intact. Griefknot explores how grief shapes peoples’ actions and the alliances that allow them to survive.

Background

The impetus for writing Griefknot came from two streams of experiences. Having watched the reverberations from the mid-life death of a parent and spouse, I wanted to reflect the way that people dealing with loss may be brought closer or further apart from one another. Why this happens may be because of their own experience within the family and because of how individual personalities are differently hard-wired. And, drawing on the experience of being white in a majority Black workplace I wanted to explore the tension that may arise from socially driven biases, separating them from the way that individuals respond to life events that while shaped by society, are more directly character driven.