MK CAFFREY

Mothers’ Bliss, Mother’s Woe is a drama filled with magical realism and music set in the Irish Ghetto of 1800’s Buffalo, NY. Mary Ryan, a young Irish immigrant who came to America to escape the traumatic decimation of the Irish by the Great Famine, has lost four young children to diphtheria and is slipping into the safety of an imaginary world peopled with her fanciful “protectors” - Saint Brigid and Joan of Arc. Knowing she cannot delay her descent into madness or rely on her overworked husband and surviving children to help her, Mary reaches out to her older sister Peg, a nun who has recently returned from study with a French neurologist. In the hope of saving Mary’s life and family, Mary and Peg join together and explore a radical treatment for her illness while also battling a dogma driven Catholic priest who wants to annul Mary’s marriage, Mary’s imaginary “friends,“ and the desperate poverty of Buffalo’s First Ward. The past is the present in this work that looks at women’s rights; immigration; anti-science; and challenges faced by the mentally ill and the families who care for them.