BY MEGHAN WAX ’27

A Blizzard of Gardening Books by Elina Zhu ‘26 is a beautifully symbolic play exploring familial relationships, the desire for connection, and the illusion of time. Played on September 23rd and December 1st in Studio B, this show places the audience in the middle of a family’s struggle to truly see one another. Written and directed by Zhu and stage managed by Daniella Solomon ’29, A Blizzard of Gardening Books is packed full of vivid images that remain with viewers long after departing from Studio B.

Bella Bradley ’29 and Amanda Denney ‘26 played A, and A’s father, B respectively. The father-daughter relationship between the two is quite complicated. While A and B were super close when A was young, B has been missing for most of A’s life, believing that his monetary support could replace his fatherly presence. A lives with Mother (Barbara Yang ’26) and only occasionally sees B and Grandma (Julia Starke ’29), usually for a meal and an unnatural exchange of scripted questions and answers. However, despite the distance between them, B asks A to write a preface for his new gardening book he titled A Letter to My Daughter. This task assigned by B torments A, who dislikes writing, doesn’t know much about gardening, and feels disconnected from her father.

Distance is portrayed cleverly in this play with the separation between A and B being physically depicted by the gap between the father and daughter’s music stands, preventing A from seeing B. Instead, B is only capable of seeing Flashback A (Rosemary Pagliano ’29), a younger version of A that B fondly remembers from when they were much closer.

The play opens with a conversation between B and Flashback A, who sees her father as a protective tiger figure and draws lines on his forehead to match her drawings. This opening scene gently invites the audience into the relationship they will see startlingly unravel throughout the play as the scenes jump back and forth in time, and merge past and present characters in powerful confrontations and confounding overlaps.

Throughout the play, A struggles with her task to write a preface for her father’s book. As if suggestions from Mother and guilt trips from B aren’t enough to completely overwhelm her, A is also inundated by the voices of Flashback A and Shadow (Harry Fitzgerald ‘29), who often appears as a mirror image of B, following A anywhere she goes.

A tries to write the preface, but all she can come up with is the haunting story of a plane crash in a blizzard that she tells to Mother. A details how the pilot and passengers have no special skills to help them survive, and as the scene unfolds, it’s revealed that B is the pilot and A and Mother are the passengers destined to freeze unless B can get them out of the situation. A tries to talk to B, but B can’t hear her. He only responds to Flashback A and ensures her safety while leaving A and Mother to endure the cold.

Photos by Logan Waugh

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Meghan Wax ’27 is a staff writer for the Skidmore Theater Living Newsletter