“What’s in your memory house?”
This relatively simple question propels Katia into the poignant soul-searching examination that is “Memory House.”
Written by prize-winning playwright Kathleen Tolan, this contemporary play provides a close-up to the dynamism in a mother and daughter’s relationship and the spiritual exhaustion that ensues while seeking answers to life’s tough questions.
Katia, a high school senior who must postmark her application to her most-desired university within three hours, is played by University senior Miranda Schmidt.
It’s New Year’s Eve in New York City, and Katia, rather than go out with friends, settles comfortably in her mother’s living room amidst papers, photographs and her laptop. Prompted by a college application question that asks her to look back at her memories, Katia begins to strip the layers of her past. She wants to find her place in the world.

Adopted from Russia and brought to New York as a child, Katia struggles with her identity. Should she go back to Russia, a country once victimized by her new homeland? Or should she stay in America, the land of bullies, and go to college?
She has few memories of childhood, a fact which ignites her thirst for obtaining truth and a context in which she can understand herself and her heritage.
Katia’s mother, Maggie, played by Lord Leebrick Theatre regular Kim Donahey, has her own issues. Middle-aged, divorced from a prominent professor and working a lackluster office job, Maggie must face the upsetting reality that her life has become.
But Maggie believes that ignorance prevails. For years she has skirted away from the impending moment when she must divulge to Katia why she chose Russia as her link to motherhood.
Tolan, the play’s writer, does a fantastic job of providing a balance of comic relief from the melancholy tone that weaves through the script.
Maggie lightens the mood by constantly poking fun at herself. She bakes a blueberry pie and babbles about the joy of blueberries in December while Katia wrestles with the meaning of life. Maggie, in her depth of denial, says her latest revelation was that life was about working and hobbies, about baking a pie. Katia often looks at her mother with disgust, which is really a façade. She fears what the future entails for her mother once she leaves for college.
The current rigid political atmosphere in the United States frames Katia’s angst. In the most emotional scene of the play, she laments the triviality of her own life when compared to that of innocent Iraqi civilians losing everything in the war.
The play’s political charge is particularly relevant. The audience is thrown into its own moment of reflection, leaving theater-goers to wonder what does hold value.
Once Katia releases the aggression she has held inside for many years, she no longer feels like a foreign transplant. Her life is just as before, only more clear.
She doesn’t need to have answers to all her profound questions; no one does. For now, she just needs to focus on her memory house, the key to her past that is so tiring to remember.
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