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SAMANTHA
By Linda Carol Anderson

Winner: 1988 John Gassner
Memorial Playwriting Award, New England Theater Conference
Finalist: The Aggie Players National Playwriting
Contest, 1989
Workshop stagings: Academy Theater, Atlanta, Georgia
and Emerson College, Boston, MA
SAMANTHA is a portrait of a disturbed family. The main
character, Amy, struggles for identity as her narcissistic mother and father
shape her into a doll that looks identical to her. This one-hour-fifteen minute
play, performed with or without intermission, uses dark humor and Jungian
archetypes. Much of the author’s research for SAMANTHA is based on books by
Alice Miller, especially, Drama of the Gifted Child.
The title, SAMANTHA, refers to a doll, which has
passed from mother to daughter, as it has been for generations. Samantha
“remembers everything – how to fill a room with the scent of flowers – how to
open a man’s heart to love.” Through Samantha, Amy’s parents seek to control
their daughter and fill holes in their relationship and lives. SAMANTHA offers
penetrating insight into the psychological undercurrents which pit daughter
against mother, mother against father, father against daughter, and daughter
against herself in battles that are sometimes better lost than won.
Amy ages eighteen months to eighteen years in the
play. Confused and longing for acceptance and reassurance, Amy endures the
emotional and sexual abuse inflicted by her parents. Rita is Amy’s frustrated
and disillusioned mother. Gerald is Amy’s manipulative father. The same actor,
who plays Gerald, doubles as Amy’s teenage boyfriend, Cedric.
As Gerald and Rita’s relationship deteriorates, Amy
concludes that her parents’ love for the doll will transfer to her if she can
be, as they describe Samantha, “quiet and happy all the time.” Amy struggles to
survive as a pawn in her parents games until, despite her wishes, she becomes
the product of her parents’ creation. Ultimately, she is rejected by both of
them. It is at this point of total isolation that to survive, she must rediscover
her true self, Amy.
The play causes audiences to ask themselves: Who is
SAMANTHA in my life? What are the forces that have shaped me? Barbara Lebow,
Playwright-in-Residence at the Academy Theatre in Atlanta (A SHAYNA MAIDEL)
says about the plays, “If you could take a Dali painting and make it into a
play, this would it. Funny and scary, sexual and surreal – it brings the
unconscious out for an airing.”
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