My overall impression
Directed by Faythallegra Coleman, Michale’s Daughter is otherwise a one woman show, populated though it is by several very different people.
More than a triumph of a young woman’s spirit over the oppression that comes in the form of judgements imposed upon her by family, friends, and society, all which converge in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Coming as they do at the dawn of a nation’s first President of mixed color – Michael’s Daughter is an investigation into the consciousness of a country grappling with its notions of liberation and confinement diseased as it is in its psyche about race, sex, and class.
Written and performed by Ciera Payton, comprised from a collection of letters between an incarcerated father and his pubescent daughter, the story is distilled from components that go into a lifetime of personal experience, dramatic study, literary taste, and refined artistic talent. Michael’s Daughter is able to pull off that rarest of all dramatic feats. Spoken in four distinct voices, each with its own cadence, nuance and vernacular, it manages to do what few theatricals ever even aspire to – it tells us about each other and it speaks to us directly.
