Why
There’s a photo that the British artist Richard Billingham took of his mother, Ray’s A Laugh. She sitting on a dingy couch, smoking a cigarette, drinking a drink, and patiently, quietly, fitting together an enormous jigsaw puzzle. Inspired by this photo and my own love of puzzles, I developed this play to explore the way we use the metaphor of a jigsaw to piece together parts of our lives that are sometimes difficult to understand.
What
Characters: 1 female
Running Time: 15 minutes
Summary: This play entreats the audience to help a woman solve two puzzles—the jigsaw laid out before her and another in her life that has long remained unsolved.
When & Where
Availability: Available for performance.
Production History:
• Produced by Riverside Theater, part of Walking the Wire, Iowa City, Iowa, Sept. 2006
• Public reading, 4th Annual John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’ Page-to-Stage Festival, Washington, DC, Sept. 2005
Publication
This play was published in issue #8 (Nov. 2007) of KNOCK, a literary magazine based in Seattle.
