We Are Blood takes Missouri family drama and salts the earth with its stains
We Are Blood. // Photo by Ryan Bruce
Written and directed by KC author and theatre staple Ryan Bernsten, We Are Blood is currently amid a short run at Olathe Civic Theatre Association [500 E. Loula, Olathe, KS] where the brisk 90 minute show dabbles in some hard truths and a spectrum of existential horrors.
Kathleen (Kendra Keller) and her adult son Raymond (Luke Knopke) are returning home from the big city to rural Missouri, where Lydia (Dani Saunders) and her daughter Nance (Kelly Main) have been holding down the family home in the wake of some deaths and disappearances. Estranged family hashing out differences over a childhood home would be difficult enough, but there’s much more at stake here than a few acres of land and a pickup truck.
We Are Blood. // Photo by Ryan Bruce
Discovering the house in disrepair and the inhabitants experimenting with occult magic, the family is forced to exorcise demons from their past. This play explores themes of loss, family trauma, and if we can ever truly escape our family history.
As Bernsten writes in the program for his director’s statement on the production: “This moment felt particularly right to do this play; Thanksgiving is coming and, for many families, things are not alright at home. The trouble in our country is made up of trouble in states, cities, communities… and families. I wanted to write a play about a family that is forced to reckon with all the things we’re not supposed to talk about—who was who’s favorite, who owes whom money, religion, sex, and death. I wanted to put all of that in a pressure cooker and force a family to face all that goes unsaid—all the pain that lies beneath the surface—to summon it, reckon with it, speak the same language and facts and perhaps transform into something new.”
In aiming for a space between an August: Osage County and an A24 horror film, Bernsten’s production successfully nails the tone where, whatever the third act brings, it’s well-earned. Knopke’s Raymond hits all the perfect notes of a kid who escaped the Midwest and worries he’s returned to somewhere too close-minded to understand his reality, only to be faced by Saunders’ Lydia whose scope of the universe defies understanding or subjugation.
A folk horror for the folks at home, We Are Blood earns its inheritance.
The show runs through Monday night, Nov. 20, 2023 and tickets for the remaining shows are available through the box office website.
We Are Blood. // Photo by Ryan Bruce
