Family Is So Important To Us Even If We Don’t Realize It

In the play, This Girl Laughs, This Girl Cries, and This Girl Does Nothing by Finnegan Kruckemeyer, three sisters grow up with their father until they are thirteen years old. In a dark night, the three sisters got lost in the woods so each one decided to go a different way. As time passed the sisters had different lives that they did not imagine they would have. But as the years passed and they found their own way, they noticed that they missed their previous lives with their father and their sisters.

One theme of this play is about growing up alone. Growing up can be so difficult because sometimes you have no idea how to face situations on your own without help, without anyone else who can explain the things you don't understand. But also over time things may change the situation because we can find ourselves that we like, the different opportunities that we have and learn to be independent. For example, in the play when the father abandoned them in the forest, all of them took different paths. At the beginning it was not easy because they spent many years apart. But they found a way to do well in life. That is what the play also wants to show.

Another theme of this play is about how important family is for us. Family is important for me because the people who want to stay on any occasion are by my side. They will be with me. In the play they demonstrate the importance of family when Carmen, Beatrix, and Albienne had already grown up and their lives were resolved. But as they think about each other, they begin to miss how they were before when they were united as a family. So they decided to go back with their sisters and dad. This scene supported the theme because despite being separated for a long time, they reached a point where they were not happy apart from each other. So the family is so important to us even if we don’t realize it.

In conclusion, this play tries to demonstrate the most important themes in people's lives. No matter how long it takes you will always return to the same place where you were.

Lead photo credit: This Girl Laughs, This Girl Cries, and This Girl Does Nothing at ArtsWest. Photo by John McLellan.

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This review was written as part of an Arts Criticism workshop at Cascade Middle School in Mrs. Boucher's Advanced English Language Learners class, taught by Press Corps teaching artist Brian Dang.