What is it that makes us who we are? After Freud and the decoding of DNA, after Rousseau and Charles Darwin, we strongly suspect it’s that pesky combination, that cosmic arm wrestle between nature and nurture. What causes things to turn out the way they have? Can our path be altered? When do we intervene, or let each make their own discoveries? These are, especially, questions in the mind of every parent.

In her 2016 play, American Song , originally commissioned by the Milwaukee Rep Company in Wisconsin, playwright Joanna Murray-Smith explores a father’s struggle with catastrophe.

It is late afternoon, we are told, and he is standing in “an astonishingly beautiful rural field.” Andy Manchewski is in his mid to late forties, “a regular guy” wearing horsehide work gloves. He is building

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