Play a Day: Seeds

Donna Hoke

"Yesterday, we didn’t know anything about him, and today, I don’t know anything else."  I could have written that once, but I did not. That is from Seeds by Donna Hoke which I read today and is available for download at New Play Exchange.

In the past three days I have read plays about sex, death, and childbearing, each unique and original works, all of them touching on aspects of the human experience I can entirely relate to.

I think this is why I am doing this.

At that point in my life, when we were breeding, and we were surrounded by a cohort of likewise single-minded colleagues, getting on with our lives with also focused and engaged in the act of procreation, gestation, ideally successfully birth and the rearing and care of entirely helpless infant humans.

Except for those who did not, could not, or could not yet conceive or bring to term a child. There have been plays on this subject. This one succeeds in that it is not about that one thing, but how it affects all things, past, present and future combined, and that the more control you believe you have over the creation and development of life, the greater the chance for disillusionment, heartbreak and loss. Who, after all, do you think you are? God?

AIDAN: I have a son.
ALICE: Always.

Thank you for this.