Part 2 of UCSB Theater & Dance’s New Works Lab presented two very different plays about breaking bonds, by playwrights studying with the Department. There was a kind of claustrophobia in Andalusia Kear’s “The Couch” as a seemingly happy couple falls apart over one of the women’s desire to have a child, and her neurotic partner’s inability to cope with this proposed intrusion into their relationship. Miriam Dance’s “In His Hands” is the story of an eager young scholar of Christian teachings who is part of a charismatic Christian minister’s congregation. Her faith is shattered when she discovers his true, manipulative and sexually inappropriate nature. The two women in these plays find their survival depends on freeing themselves from their dependency upon all they thought they held dear.
