Daisy Violet the Bitch Beast King by Sam Collier

thoughts from the producer/director

From the moment I first read the play, I could not get Daisy Violet off my mind. It’s really the ideal position to be in as a director – to have a script that so inspires you that it consumes every one of your thoughts (even if it’s kind of annoying for those in your life to only ever hear about this damn play you’re working on). And when it came time for me to choose what would be Star Stuff’s very first script, it was a no-brainer that we would be playing with Miss Daisy.

What strikes me most about Daisy Violet is what she reveals about the self: the contrast between others’ perceptions of the external and one’s own truth of the internal. This idea of the arbitrarity of how identity is created, expressed, and perceived is pervasive throughout the text. There are pieces of your identity which you have agency over and pieces of your identity which you do not; not to mention there are even more pieces of your identity that are impressed upon you by perhaps one of the most arbitrary circumstances of all: your birth. For Daisy, her sisters create her in a Pygmalion-esque bid to create a “horrible terrible” sister to “blame all the bad stuff on.” At first, they have these preconceived notions about Daisy and even try to fix her (“How can we introduce you to the adults if you insist upon speaking so strangely?”), but when Daisy becomes too big, too actualized, too herself to conform to her sisters' preconceptions, rather than try to control or stifle her (as the Pygmalion archetype often does with its Creation), Daisy’s sisters grow with her, defend her, and protect her. And although her sisters put in this effort to understand her, the external world does not. For all the adults around the sisters, Daisy Violet struggles to “adjust to her social role as Girl,” but what the hell arbitrary metrics are even there to determine what is Girl?

Girl dinner, girl math, I’m just a girl – you are a victim. Women are creatures; they sweat and ooze and hunger and excrete and wrinkle and eventually die. There is no singular, definitive woman. There is no singular, definitive anyone. There is no singular, definitive anything. Everything’s malleable.

Thank you for coming out to support Star Stuff Theatre and our very first show, Daisy Violet the Bitch Beast King. Thank you to the actors for being the most thoughtful and nuanced little family, thank you to the designers/crew for throwing so much of yourselves into this insane bubbling cauldron we call a show, thank you to Chloe for keeping my limbs intact and my head on my shoulders, thank you to the Star Stuff Brain Trust for always Getting It, and thank you to Sam for giving us this world to play in.

-figaro