What do we do with – what do we do about – the maddening, ungainly, exhausting, and sometimes ridiculous baggage we carry around with us, that hurts with every step we take; and at the same time makes us, for good and bad and in-between, who we actually are?

How on earth, even in the most infinite of worlds, did we somehow get here from back there – and more to the point: What do we do NOW?

This is the question, the endlessly exciting dynamic – the Weight of the Past on the Present – that gets me up in the morning as an artist.  And it is very much the central core of Albert’s Flower.  Am I the sum of each and every thing that has happened to me, or its hostage?  Do we get second chances to make who we are?  And more than this: Can the heart, once locked, find a working key?

An old man, at a stark turning point, heads straight back to a long-lost childhood street like it’s a red-flashing homing beacon.  Something has to happen, right here, right now, before it’s too late.

Somebody else lives here now, several somebodies down the line, in the house he grew up in:  a young woman raising her family on this weekday afternoon, who knows nothing of the past of this place, of the ground she lives on and its hidden, lost lives.

Can these two people – in this brief chamber piece, this desperately quiet 18-minute pas de deux on the edge of an emotional cliff – can they actually manage to see each other, to find a bridge across the chasm, before one of them tumbles over the edge in the dark?

Anyhow, that’s the sealed box Albert’s Flower is there to snap open.