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The Confirmation

Kier Peters

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A Sun & Moon title.

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Part of From the Other Side of the Century II

Grandma is visiting Mother, who lives in Grandma’s backyard—a backyard replete with furniture and kitchen appliances. And Mother is planning a surprise birthday party for Grandma, who claims to have been born more than a hundred years ago. But Grandma doesn’t like parties any more than she likes the daughters who pop up at various moments in this hilarious play. There is Sister, a nun, who magically appears from behind a tree, accompanied by her lesbian lover, Carmelita, also a nun. And Mother has even tracked down the lost sister, Blanche, who was—according to the family legend—taught to speak only Norwegian, but who, in fact, speaks only stage Yiddish. These sisters and their mother endure a series of ridiculous encounters revealing their long-harbored loves and hates for one another.

But Carmelita—stranger and intruder—changes everything. Desperate to become “one of the family,” she gradually uncovers their secrets, including the past existence of a brother, who appears to her as a ghost and convinces her that she is his daughter. Whether she is “family” or not, she leads both characters and audience into a bizarre series of events.

First performed at Vineyard Theater in Manhattan, this play revels in every nuance of mid-American language. Among Peters’s other plays are Family, A Dog Tries to Kiss the Sky, Intentional Coincidence, and Past Present Future Tense, all collected in the Green Integer volume A Dog Tries to Kiss the Sky: Six Short Plays. Past Present Future Tense was performed as an opera, Still in Love, composed by Michael Kowalski.