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Production History

Go, Dog. Go!

Hansel and Gretel

A Year With
Frog and Toad

Brooklyn Bridge

Splash Hatch on the E Going Down

The Monkey King

The Hobbit

CTC Family Guide

Family Guide: Brooklyn Bridge
A detailed description of the play, including things to do and think about, for parents to share with their families.

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Summary
This play is full of bridges. The Brooklyn Bridge is there, of course, but even more important are the bridges between people. The story presents snippets of many lives being lived simultaneously beside, above and below one another in an apartment building - separate but interconnected. Central is a young immigrant girl, Alexandra Trusotsky, or Sasha. We glimpse images of the Brooklyn Bridge being built, in history, song and scenic elements, but most wonderfully we see Sasha building bridges between herself and others. What at first seems disconnected becomes a whole. A sense of community is built.

A Synopsis of the Story
Sasha is home from school: up the steps to the first door, key in the lock, through the door with the book bag that doubles her size, check the mail - it's late again - to the elevator - out of order, again - up the stairs, key in the lock, key in the lock, key in the lock, through the door - and the phone rings! It's mom. "Hi, Mom - mamochka. Yes, Mom. I won't, Mom. I will, Mom. I did, Mom. Do we have a pen? Later, mamochka." Sasha is home and that means homework - in a big way.

There's not a pen in the house. There are a whole lot of rules about whether or not a young girl is allowed to leave the apartment when her mother is at work, and a paper on the Brooklyn Bridge due tomorrow, but no pen.

Desperation finally drives Sasha to the neighbor's door. She meets Sam, a West Indian cab driver with a plan to become a dentist (he's going to night school). He has a cat - but no pen. Down the hall from one direction floats the beginning of a song from a songwriter in an apartment above. A shadowy figure creeps from the other direction to empty the trash and move a plant. A door opens in Sasha's path, and she meets Trudi, a businesswoman on her way to a meeting.

Trudi has no pen. She does have a tendency to lose track of time, and is tempted to do so talking about the bridge (the building of the bridge and the way it changed the lives of inhabitants of Brooklyn and Manhattan). They go to the roof to check the clock on the Williamsburg Savings Bank building. From the roof Sasha can see the building where her mom works cleaning offices, so she says, "Hi." Her mom and she will both take a break at 8:00. They'll have dinner together that way. When Trudi leaves the phone in Sasha's apartment is ringing.

"Hi, Mamochka. I was in the other room. I did, Mom. Can you come home early? Never mind. Later, Mamochka." The search for a pen takes Sasha back into the hall where she meets John, an older man in a wheelchair. The elevator is broken and the mail is downstairs. That's a problem. Sasha checks the mail, but the mailman - mail woman - mail carrier (what you call it is a sign of which generation you belong to) hasn't come yet. John has a pen, but, he wants an explanation before he lends it. He doesn't buy the excuse that the delay in Sasha's paper is due to the lack of a pen. "What's the real reason?" he asks again and again. "I am in awe," she says. The bridge is so very big. It's bigger than history, bigger than the facts Sasha has read, bigger than the song the songwriter is composing in its honor.

While John goes into his apartment to look for a pen, Sasha checks the mail again and finds a letter of her own that she isn't sure she wants to read. Sitting on the stoop with it, she meets Talidia, a Puerto Rican woman who lives in apartment 2C with her children. Both of them have forgotten their keys and can't get in. They sit and talk. About school. About whether Talidia has a pen and why Sasha needs one - really. About Sasha's father. Talidia has been in the building since long before Sasha's daddy left town - permanently. It's a letter from him Sasha isn't reading.

John buzzes Sasha and Talidia into the building. The bad news is the pen he found is out of ink. The good news is he has others - but he hasn't found them yet. John asks her into his apartment and the two of them have to deal with a big question: when does a stranger become a neighbor? The thing is, the Brooklyn Bridge is clearly visible from John's balcony, and John himself is an expert on the history of the bridge. Both of them know piles of facts about it, and both of them know more than that. They know what the bridge cost, besides money. They know what the bridge means. Both of them understand connections.

Suddenly, the building is full of them - connections. A musician is moving slowly toward the songwriter's apartment. He is carrying a bass up the stairs and - he has a pen!!! John has paper, and the hallway is as good a place as any to write. Everyone supplies the "quiet" she needs to think, until the words begin to come. Then everything flows together. The history of the bridge, the song that is finally finished, the people of the building are all connected with the bridge itself. It is all tied together, and it is a beautiful thing.

AS you get READY to SEE the SHOW What is a bridge? Take time to think about it. You might look it up in a dictionary, or look around you to find various meanings. Think of an example of a bridge you drive across. Think of an example of a bridge you walk across. Think of an example of a bridge between people. Which one do you use most often? Remember a bridge which you use frequently that spans a river or something similar. See if you can imagine how people got from one side to the other before the bridge was built. How would you and others get across now if the bridge disappeared? Does the bridge make an important difference? One of the things to notice about the world in this play is that Sasha, the central character, gets a lot of support from the world outside her own family. How do people outside your family support you - in ways both big and small? A modern view (above) and a vintage ad A very important question...what is a stranger? How do you and your family decide what is safe when it comes to relating to people you don't yet know? Talk about it together.

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