My Daughter Keeps Our Hammer
Opening Night: January 15, 2014
Closing: February 27, 2014
Theater: The Flea Theater
My Daughter Keeps Our Hammer follows two estranged sisters, one needy mother and one intolerable sheep. Stuck in a forgotten prairie town, clashing sisters Sarah and Hannah unite when they attempt to housebreak mom’s beloved sheep, Vicky, the lone survivor of the family’s former flock. But family secrets make bad shepherds. And the sisters must choose: reconcile their past, or sacrifice their future?
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February 24, 2014
Part Sam Shepard gothic drama, part “Moth Radio Hour” yarn, My Daughter Keeps Our Hammer, by Brian Watkins, tells the story of Sarah and Hannah, sisters in their 20s, living with their ailing mother in the farm country of Eaton, Colo., and desperate for a way out. Or, rather, the sisters tell the story, addressing the audience in a series of monologues. Sarah (Katherine Folk-Sullivan), who mainly tends to their self-absorbed, needy mother, hopes to flee this prison of obligation and go to college. Hannah (Layla Khoshnoudi) gets off the ranch only long enough for her job at the diner in town.
READ THE REVIEWFebruary 25, 2014
Playwright Brian Watkins has found success through productions of his work mostly at small Off Off Broadway and fringe venues, but it would be unfair to refer to him as a “rising young voice.” To judge from the quality of My Daughter Keeps Our Hammer, his haunted and haunting one-act play on view at the Flea Theater, I would say the playwright’s rich and original voice has risen high already and fully deserves to be experienced by a wider audience.
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January 25, 2014
There’s something distinctly American about Brian Watkins’ My Daughter Keeps Our Hammer, directed by Danya Taymor at The Flea Theater. Two sisters live in the frustrating isolation of the Colorado plains with their mother, a pet sheep, and a pickup truck that no one uses. It’s also a memory play about frontier days, when people got lost in the wilderness and were never heard of again except in ghost stories. And then of course there’s violence, the cruel and vengeful kind. Filled with bleak humor that grows gruesomely darker, My Daughter Keeps Our Hammer fits well into this genre of American literature (think Sam Shepard’s True West), yet it carves out a chilling little niche for itself. And in the more-than-able hands of Taymor, the play’s images of shadow and light haunt the mind like a tale told around a campfire.
READ THE REVIEWFebruary 25, 2014
Two no-nonsense prairie sisters, a prized pick-up truck, and one hell of an indestructible sheep: the combined efforts of playwright Brian Watkins and the two actresses, Katherine Folk-Sullivan and Layla Khoshnoudi in My Daughter Keeps Our Hammer, evoke the friction of isolated country life, the open plains only exacerbating the claustrophobia. The first half of the play is mostly exposition, as we acquaint ourselves with sisters Sarah and Hannah. Sarah finds herself relegated to being the caregiver to their ailing mother and their irritating ten-year-old sheep, Vicky.
READ THE REVIEWFebruary 25, 2014
My Daughter Keeps Our Hammer follows two estranged sisters, one needy mother and one intolerable sheep. Stuck in a forgotten prairie town, clashing sisters Sarah and Hannah unite when they attempt to housebreak mom’s beloved sheep, Vicky, the lone survivor of the family’s former flock. But family secrets make bad shepherds. And the sisters must choose: reconcile their past or sacrifice their future. The production features Hannah Finn (Sarah Flood in Salem Mass), Katherine Folk-Sullivan (Mary-Kate Olsen is in Love, These Seven Sicknesses), Layla Khoshnoudi (Job, Mexicans), and Kate Thulin (Sarah Flood in Salem Mass).
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