Abbale,
Director's Note
Developing Abbale has been an entirely unique process, in large part because I started working on the show about seven months pregnant, and now I have a three year old daughter. I learned to read script drafts while holding a baby at three am. We had zoom rehearsals while overhearing my husband playing with Frankie in the next room. We ran monologues in my backyard, and on breaks Andrew and Frankie would have dance parties. I’m so grateful for for his collaborative flexibility, (and willingness to twirl with a toddler) because this has been one of the most joyous collaborations of my life.
Obviously, working on this piece has made me reflect on my own father, and our relationship. He was a mythic presence—strikingly tall, hilarious, loud. A constant adventurer. A writer. He told stories with the exact amount of embellishment that would annoy his kids and improve the stories. He passed away in 2013, and I still, on some conscious or unconscious level, make most of my decisions based on his imagined approval.
It’s wild how our lives are continuously shaped by the people who made us. The fathers and father figures. Who would we be if we weren’t walking in these specific shadows? If the things we strive for and the things we fight against were not their particular quirks and neuroses?
As you watch this show, I am probably also somewhere in the audience, hoping my dad would have liked it.
We never stop being someone’s kid.
-- Lisa Owaki Bierman
Obviously, working on this piece has made me reflect on my own father, and our relationship. He was a mythic presence—strikingly tall, hilarious, loud. A constant adventurer. A writer. He told stories with the exact amount of embellishment that would annoy his kids and improve the stories. He passed away in 2013, and I still, on some conscious or unconscious level, make most of my decisions based on his imagined approval.
It’s wild how our lives are continuously shaped by the people who made us. The fathers and father figures. Who would we be if we weren’t walking in these specific shadows? If the things we strive for and the things we fight against were not their particular quirks and neuroses?
As you watch this show, I am probably also somewhere in the audience, hoping my dad would have liked it.
We never stop being someone’s kid.
-- Lisa Owaki Bierman