“Swatow women are supposed to be fierce.” That’s what Grandmother tells her daughter. Grandmother’s a butcher and to her disappointment, her daughter’s a vegetarian. But to her satisfaction, her granddaughter killed her first chicken at the age of three. In this ferocious comedy, the three generations of women grapple with their dark history, emotional inheritance and the legacy of mothers’ life lessons and daughters’ love lives. And there’s blood. Lots of blood.
Keywords: Chinese-Canadian, Women, intergenerational, domestic violence, dark comedy
First produced at Tarragon Theatre, Toronto ON, 2022
Genre: Dark Comedy
Acts: 1
Run time: 90 minutes
Suitable for students 16+
Content notes: Contains discussions of domestic violence, blood
Cast size: 3
Female roles: 3
"It’s a testament to Hung’s strong writing, and the way she messes with our consciences, that we come to care and empathize with all three of these characters and their struggles. Objectively speaking, Mother is a coldblooded murderer, and Grandmother and Daughter are her conniving accomplices... Hung’s dialogue is sharp and witty, and her humour cuts through like a knife, riffing on the irony and the play’s inherent absurdity."
- Intermission Magazine
"...there’s lots of skill in the way Hung moves, in a series of interstitial scenes, from the present-day narrative to the past, where patterns of abuse and violence are established. Even more fascinating is that the three actors play different roles in the past, so we literally see a daughter in one scene become the mother in the next."
- Now Toronto