An hour and fifteen minute performance. I invited up to three guests at a time every ten minutes to come and eat a pasta dish, one my father used to make for me all of the time, while listening to me read a monologue which was etched into sixteen plates. Once finishing reading, I rang a bell to which the door of the room was opened gesturing to them that the performance was over. A handwritten letter was then given to them saying:
"My father is not only my dad, but also my best friend. Most of the time, he is more my best friend than my father. We are inseparable, joined at the hip, always have been and always will be. He suffers from depression and PTSD, as do I, and has had a difficult past. Not a lot of people are there for him, it is really only me. This puts a lot of pressure on me, a weight on my shoulders to carry him when he can no longer carry me. I am his person. There are many bad nights that most people don’t know about, bad nights where I try to navigate through his stomach-wrenching texts to dissect whether he is truly okay or not, and whether I need to drop what I am doing to go to him, or even call 911. I worry about him all of the time and it scares me to read his texts on those horrible nights.
The monologue that I have read for you tonight is a rough cut of the texts that I receive on those bad days, containing phrases between June 2018 and now. I read them to you as my dinner guest to draw you into a piece of my world, a piece of my daily life. We have met over dinner because dinners are usually happy, fun and full of laughter- everyone enjoys themselves and eats. This is a common place of interaction and connection. Now that you have left, I will document the amount of food you have eaten. You probably didn’t even touch the food or simply couldn’t, just as I can’t on these bad days. It is hard to swallow and my plate is full, not just one plate but many. Now as I empty some of my plate, I begin to fill yours."