Brook and William have not spoken in ten years-not since the birth of Bill, the small boy who stands as living proof of Brook's one-time infidelity. But they preserve their silent marriage, living at opposite ends of a single house, communicating only through recordings and letters that their children must constantly ferry between husband and wife.

William, the former college professor who was disgraced after marrying one of his students, now spends his time obsessing over his latest book, an illustrated history of punctuation. Though obsessed with the mechanisms of communication-the intricacies and nuances of the English language and its grammatical structures and trappings-he is utterly unable to connect with his own family on any communicative level.

Brook has never escaped the specter of being her husband's pupil, even once she herself became a teacher. A perpetual student in her own household, even relating to her own children becomes a competition in pedagogy. But in the midst of her desperation, she has a plan: one that will finally bring her family some semblance of normalcy.

Meanwhile, the children, Eloquence and Bill, struggle to find their place in this fractured family. Caught between a bitter father and a guilt-ridden mother, they cling to each other and to their shared love of fairy tales.

Parens. is about a family obsessed with the mechanics of the English language, but utterly incapable of connecting on any communicative level. The play explores the differences between technical mastery of language and effective use of language. In an extension of the play's major theme, the story is structured as a series of nested parenthetical moments. Each scene that "opens" in the first half is later "closed" in the second, such that the time of the play runs forward until midway through, at which point the story reverses, and begins moving back toward the beginning of the play. Thus, the final chronological moment of the story takes place in the very center of the play.

Cast Requirements

Women: 2
Men: 2
Child (boy): 1
Total Cast: 5

My second full-length play, Parens., was developed with the aid of The Ivan Gold Fellowship to the Writers' Room of Boston. In 2006, Parens. was chosen for public reading at The Last Frontier Theatre Festival in Valdez, Alaska, and was a runner-up for The Alarm Clock Theatre's playwriting competition.