By Ireen Savoy
Daddy’s Issues
Created by Big T Collective
Toronto | 45 mins
Who would have thought an old iPhone could re-open so many wounds?
Anais, a young trans woman, finds her estranged father’s old iPhone as she’s moving in with her partner. This leads the young couple to have difficult conversations about fatherhood since she had previously told her partner that her dad had passed.
The characters go on discussing how grief is not linear and can take many different shapes. This challenges their relationship and leads them to talk about topics that can make or break any relationship.
This is a deep play that takes a hard look at the role fathers have in our lives and how their presence, or lack of, can impact us. This play explores different kinds of fatherly abandonments and how those traumas can linger and influence current day relationships. It can manifest in even more complex ways, especially for people who do not conform to societal binaries.
Image from Daddy’s Issues. Photo provided.
Daddy’s Issues explores living traumatic experiences and how they shape you. It showcases the duality between putting up firm boundaries and cutting off toxic relationships, or by suppressing your feelings in order to build relationships with people who can and have hurt you, and what happens when these two wounded people confront and comfort each other.
The stage is simple but visually interesting with moving boxes that are used as props. The story shifts from being narrated, to monologued, to dialogues between the two main characters, keeping the audience on their toes as we follow along with the developing story.
A lovely aspect of this play is the bilingualism that is effortlessly incorporated throughout. It adds a layer of truth and reinforces part of the Canadian human experience having the French and English blend together in such a natural way. They make the play accessible to all by projecting subtitles on a screen behind the actors.
Ultimately this was a moving piece that brought to light issues that are not discussed every day. With strong potential, this is a great production to keep an eye on as it develops over time.
Daddy’s Issues played at undercurrents from Feb. 14-15. For more information about the show, check out the undercurrents festival website.
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