“Eat something. Most of the time we need things even before we understand why we want them.”
A wife travels with her dead husband to his hometown in an unknown place for a final meal with the family. Elsewhere, a woman leaves food outside her door for her lost cat but it is consumed by something else. Yet elsewhere, a mother guides her daughter one last time in the preparation of a meal. In the aftermath of great loss, each person feels the pangs of a spiritual hunger that may only be satiated by the rituals of eating, feasting and fasting.
SEED is a work that is planted in the soil of this impossible ‘something’, growing out of abysmal grief to bear the bittersweet fruits of reconciliation. The ambivalence of mourning is evoked in the Japanese title of the play Ueru, which can mean ‘to grow’ and ‘to be hungry’. Disoriented by tragedy, each character is guided by the primal instinct to eat as they find each other to share a meal, and to find that life continues to grow in spite of the trauma of disaster.
