Urn

- Urn -
by
Santiago Guzmán

Recipient of the NL's 2022 Arts and Letter's Award
Short-listed for NLCU's Fresh Fish Award 2022

TODOS Productions is honoured to have been invited by Eastern Front Theatre (EFT) to present the world premiere of Santiago Guzmán’s Urn during their annual STAGES Festival in Dartmouth, NS, on June 23, 2022. After having the premiere of Urn in Halifax, we will bring the successful production back to St. John’s for the Newfoundland and Labrador premiere at LSPU Hall for our community on June 29-30, 2022.

Urn has been developed with the support of Playwrights Atlantic Resource Centre (PARC) through the PARC/EFT RBC Emerging Playwrights Unit since 2019.

Home? Where-what is home?
Urn follows the journey of Esteban and Mariana, two siblings that reconnect at their mom’s funeral after years of Esteban being estranged from the family. Despite their fractured relationship, they will have to decide where to inter their mother's ashes: their adopted home, St. John’s, NL, or their homeland, Mexico City.

Urn explores the concept of ‘home’ from the perspective of two immigrants who have spent more years in their adopted country than their homeland. They have to deal with the consequences of what happens when the only person who has grounded them to their cultural identity is gone.

Urn has a non-conventional narrative with a sense of magical realism, where flashbacks give us small glimpses of Esteban and Mariana’s relationship before their rupture as well as their lives before arriving in Newfoundland and Labrador. The siblings in Urn have so much to resolve as they explore their feelings about identity, belonging, and family unity, but have avoided these questions and conflict, until the death of their mother forces them to face these issues head-on.