Firedance

Awakening/Journey/Dreams
A Trilogy by Arthur Danin Adler

Awakening

The first in a set of three plays: Awakening/Journey/Dreams.
Though the trilogy embraces the discovery and development of two
characters, each play stands on its own.

The year is 1976. A rainy, late Autumn Friday in New York. Five
brothers and sisters have gathered for the funeral of their mother.
Though this was a typical middle-class Jewish family, the
passing-on of the parents has opened up the core of threads that binds them together--- and the threads are unraveling

What was typical has become bizarre. What was comfortable has become frightening. What was secure has become unstable and chaotic.

Against a backdrop of accumulated disillusionment, the upheaval of the 1960's, the Kennedy assassinations, the Vietnam war, the Watergate fiasco, these five place themselves in confrontation with each other and with the world they live in.

During a 24-hour period, they tear apart the myths they've created about who they are and what they have become. Nothing follows the comfort of tradition. In the morning, solemnity dissolves into a raucous drunken party in which they pledge themselves to a "new order" and dance away old relationships. In the afternoon, the funeral is marred by the refusal of one them to attend. In the evening, the last traditional coming-together ends in another rampage — driven by caustic humor, stinging innuendo, and cast in a dance of voyeuristic picture-taking.
The montage explodes!

An unexpected and unfathomable revelation emerges — a love affair between a brother and a sister — a romantic, undaunted, attempt by two of them to capture a dream. What may have been bizarre becomes normal; what was normal remains twisted. And the day ends in a near-tragic series of events.