This Is My Office and Notes on My Mother’s Decline: Two Plays
by Andy Bragen
Northwestern University Press, 2022 Paper: 978-0-8101-4461-3 | eISBN: 978-0-8101-4462-0 Library of Congress Classification PS3602.R344418T48 2022 Dewey Decimal Classification 812.6
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
These plays by Andy Bragen examine the intimacies and shadows that exist between parents and children. In This Is My Office, a guided tour through an empty office becomes the unexpected portal to a forgotten New York and a father’s legacy. This play brings you face-to-face with a narrator who finds his way through doubt, soul-sickness, and doughnut cravings by telling you a story. Not the one he meant to tell, but a richer one about family, redemption, and love.
The autobiographical Notes on My Mother’s Decline evokes the final days of a woman’s life. Late at night, while his baby daughter sleeps, a son takes notes on his mother’s daily life and scenes from their complicated relationship. He is shaping a play, as well as a perspective. Two blocks away, his mother naps, smokes, reads, and drinks coffee. She is shaping her existence within encroaching confines. Bragen plumbs silences and one-sided conversations to ask how we come to know one another as parents and as children. How do we care for those we love, and what does it take to live with—and without—them?
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
ANDY BRAGEN is the author of numerous plays, including The Hairy Dutchman; Spuyten Duyvil; Greater Messapia; Game, Set, Match; and Don’t You F**king Say a Word. A graduate of Brown University’s Literary Arts MFA Program, Bragen has been the recipient of Workspace and Process Space Residencies from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Other honors include the Clubbed Thumb Biennial Commission, a Tennessee Williams Fellowship from Sewanee: The University of the South, a Jerome Fellowship, a New Voices Fellowship from the Ensemble Studio Theatre, a Dramatists Guild Fellowship, a Berkeley Rep Ground Floor Residency, and residencies at Millay Colony and Blue Mountain Center.
REVIEWS
“With a certain and subdued beauty, Notes on My Mother’s Decline softens the blow that expectations, memory, and loss deal to a contemporary mother-son relationship.” —Derek McCracken, BroadwayWorld
“Our time with Andy in his office is about the nonspectacular, average struggles that life brings to us all. It’s also about the average, nonspectacular ways in which Andy deals with his realities. But the honesty and intimacy with which we go on this journey with Andy is what makes This Is My Office truly special and far from average.” —Amanda Cooper, Curtain Up— -
TABLE OF CONTENTS
This is My Office
Notes on My Mother's Decline
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This Is My Office and Notes on My Mother’s Decline: Two Plays
by Andy Bragen
Northwestern University Press, 2022 Paper: 978-0-8101-4461-3 eISBN: 978-0-8101-4462-0
These plays by Andy Bragen examine the intimacies and shadows that exist between parents and children. In This Is My Office, a guided tour through an empty office becomes the unexpected portal to a forgotten New York and a father’s legacy. This play brings you face-to-face with a narrator who finds his way through doubt, soul-sickness, and doughnut cravings by telling you a story. Not the one he meant to tell, but a richer one about family, redemption, and love.
The autobiographical Notes on My Mother’s Decline evokes the final days of a woman’s life. Late at night, while his baby daughter sleeps, a son takes notes on his mother’s daily life and scenes from their complicated relationship. He is shaping a play, as well as a perspective. Two blocks away, his mother naps, smokes, reads, and drinks coffee. She is shaping her existence within encroaching confines. Bragen plumbs silences and one-sided conversations to ask how we come to know one another as parents and as children. How do we care for those we love, and what does it take to live with—and without—them?
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
ANDY BRAGEN is the author of numerous plays, including The Hairy Dutchman; Spuyten Duyvil; Greater Messapia; Game, Set, Match; and Don’t You F**king Say a Word. A graduate of Brown University’s Literary Arts MFA Program, Bragen has been the recipient of Workspace and Process Space Residencies from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Other honors include the Clubbed Thumb Biennial Commission, a Tennessee Williams Fellowship from Sewanee: The University of the South, a Jerome Fellowship, a New Voices Fellowship from the Ensemble Studio Theatre, a Dramatists Guild Fellowship, a Berkeley Rep Ground Floor Residency, and residencies at Millay Colony and Blue Mountain Center.
REVIEWS
“With a certain and subdued beauty, Notes on My Mother’s Decline softens the blow that expectations, memory, and loss deal to a contemporary mother-son relationship.” —Derek McCracken, BroadwayWorld
“Our time with Andy in his office is about the nonspectacular, average struggles that life brings to us all. It’s also about the average, nonspectacular ways in which Andy deals with his realities. But the honesty and intimacy with which we go on this journey with Andy is what makes This Is My Office truly special and far from average.” —Amanda Cooper, Curtain Up— -
TABLE OF CONTENTS
This is My Office
Notes on My Mother's Decline
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE