A Father’s Impossible Dreams, A Mother’s Destructive Love: An Immigration Story
Jonas embraces all that is new and American. Johanna refuses to learn English. Their four daughters are caught between his fantastic dreams and her crippling fears. Johanna wants her children to get ahead but realizes she may have to lose them to a foreign culture in order for them to do so. These family stories of high hopes and unfulfilled dreams are the stories of many immigrants and reflect much about life in the west at the turn of the last century.
“Is this our Sacrifice to the new land? Our love for each other?” – Jonas, Act II
“Douglass’ play is a well crafted, interesting piece of work that manages some light, even raucous moments (like a food fight!) within the pervasive black-cloud atmosphere created by Johanna, self-described as ‘always the nay-sayer, the sour one.’ Writing the play must have been an exorcism of sorts for Douglass, a way of coming to terms with the memory of her great-grandmother; a barbed, iron-willed woman like Johanna would take some dealing with generation after generation.”
– Wayne Johnson, The Seattle Times
Winner of the National David Library Award for Best Play About the American Experience
Kennedy Center ACTF Regional Playwriting Award
University of Washington Studio Production
with Guest Artist Lori Larsen, 1988
University of Washington Mainstage Production, 1989
ACTF Regional Festival, Western Washington University, 1990
Driftwood Players, Edmonds, Washington, 1990 – Selected as part of the City of Edmonds Centennial
Edmonds Stories is coming to Colorado this summer Produced by The Theater Company of Lafayette – Performances, July 21 – August 6, 2023
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