The Terrors of Domesticity
As the Domestic Gothic issue of Polish Gothic was nearing publication, I went to see a performance based on Dracula at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts. The scenography included an array of domestic spaces that matter in Gothic fiction: a drawing room, a castle, and a mental asylum. What unites these spaces […]
Hortus meus
There is no place in the world that I love better than my garden. My life’s work. I am so proud of it. When I first got my hands on this property, when I first saw this garden, I knew that was it — this was my calling. Back then, it wasn’t so beautiful. Actually, […]
Pet People
My darling son, The inquest has come and gone, as has the funeral. The cuts and bruises healed first, then eventually the broken arm and six broken ribs. My neck still twinges in the cold, a reminder of the whiplash, that violent microsecond where my head was jerked from one space to another. I haven’t […]
1999, Year of the Rabbit
Hanging on the wall outside my psychologist’s office was a painting. A two-foot square grey canvas with a black circle in the middle. I stared at it, playing with the button on my shirtsleeve. It reminded me of frogspawn; a dark speck in jelly. “It’s my first time seeing a psychologist.” I said when I […]
A Rabbit Soup
I threw away the meat. It was getting harder and harder to ignore the stench. For the first week and a half it was doable, but after Thursday it became unbearable — escaping the kitchen and crawling into the bathroom like a lumbering zombie. But can a dead rabbit actually become a zombie? It still […]
Next to Normal
Next to Normal, the Pulitzer Prize–winning musical by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey, premiered on Broadway in 2008. A professional recording of the 2024 West End revival was recently released online. The Polish production, which I had the opportunity to see, debuted at Teatr Syrena in 2019. Next to Normal explores themes of mental illness, […]