Father/Daughter

Father/Daughter


By Kait Kerrigan 
Originally Produced at Aurora Theatre, Berkeley, CA
November 12, 2021-December 12, 2021



Kait Kerrigan’s Father/Daughter is a structurally inventive theatrical piece in which two actors play both pairs of lovers in parallel stories told 23 years apart. Baldwin is Miranda’s 30-year-old divorced father trying to forge a new relationship with a beguiling young woman; Miranda is Baldwin’s 30-year-old daughter embarking on her first serious relationship. How do our choices affect our children? How do our parents affect our romantic lives? What can we learn from the relationships we choose in order to repair the relationships we inherit? Breathtakingly told, Kerrigan’s play explores quite literally the intricate dance between familial and romantic love.


Artistic Statement: When I first read Kait Kerrigan's FATHER/DAUGHTER, I was struck by its audacious structure, and by how effective that structure turned out to be in delivering the emotional wallop of this deeply personal story. We programmed the world premiere for our 2020/2021 Season, which was of course canceled in its entirety due to the pandemic. In the intervening year, FATHER/DAUGHTER's themes of isolation and connection have become even more relevant as we all deal with the emotional fallout of a year spent apart and the prospect of a return to face-to-face interaction. In the play, we see both ends of a rocky relationship between an emotionally distant father and his sharp-elbowed daughter. Both are uncomfortable with vulnerability, and yet each embarks on a new relationship that challenges their defenses and ultimately leads to an opportunity for reconciliation. The prospect of taking a live audience on this journey as we are all navigating our return to in-person interactions is thrilling -- it's exactly the type of resonance that exemplifies live theatre at its best. - Josh Costellow, Artistic Director 


Kait Kerrigan is an award-winning playwright, librettist, and lyricist known widely for her musical theatre work with writing partner Brian Lowdermilk. Off-Broadway Musicals: The Mad Ones, Henry and Mudge, and Rosie Revere, Engineer, and Friends. Plays include Disaster Relief, Imaginary Love, and Transit. Other musicals include The Bad Years, The Woman Upstairs, Republic, Wrong Number, Unbound, and two chart-topping albums, Our First Mistake and Kerrigan-Lowdermilk Live. A graduate of Barnard College and former Dramatist Guild Fellow, Kerrigan’s awards include the Kleban Award for libretto writing, a Jonathan Larson Grant from the American Theatre Wing, and a Theatre Hall of Fame Fellowship as Most Promising Lyricist.


Director: M. Graham Smith