Amelia Workman stars as Soph, a daughter in search of a father she’s never known. Purchase this photo

Set to the music of a grand piano, the world premiere of "The History of Light," running at the Contemporary American Theater Festival through Aug. 2, explores two stories, of father and daughter, and how they complete one another.

In the process of learning about her father, who left when she was a baby, Soph (Amelia Workman) finds out who she is. But it's through the fervent love letters written by a younger version of her dad, sent to Soph via mail by his former lover, that she learns, gradually and disconnectedly, about her father's personality. The slow unveiling leaves Soph wondering even more who he was then and who he is now.

What's most entertaining to watch in the play, written by Eisa Davis, and where it's most creative, is the literal traveling through time and mindstates.

A letter Soph receives from her father's former lover, Susan (Lee Roy Rogers), is read aloud, and subsequent letters -- love letters written by her father to Susan -- are seen, rather than heard. Also on the stage are fragments of Soph's own imagination, where present jumbles with the past and her love life meshes with that of the father she never knew.

As Soph picks up the remnants, she realizes she and her father share near-parallel love stories, which crisscross in the play to drive home the point. In short, Soph, black, has been in love with Math (Jason Denuszek), a white, geeky type turned businessman, since she was young, and the two have been mostly best friends, minus one steamy night; Soph's father, Turner Sampson (David Emerson Toney), fell in love with the radical Susan when he was young. Both relationships fall through, despite their passion, because of quiet circumstances -- basically race, an underlying theme throughout the play that eventually became volcanic.

And then there's the "broken" motif: Soph's broken heart that she insists will be instantaneously fixed were Math to be romantically involved with her, rather than just a friend who occasionally reappears; her father's inability to fix things, like his car stereo -- and his relationship with his daughter.

"I wondered how long it had been broken and what kind of person leaves things broken," Soph mused to Math after taking a road trip with her father, the first real time they spent together.

A moment of clarity comes when she realized her place in the fabric of life, and she gets stability from that, after accepting it. She finally sees the pieces that had gone missing for decades -- namely, her father -- and by understanding his story, she saw her own place in the big, mysterious puzzle, as if she were a missing piece herself.

Although she recognizes she's broken, she knows, by the end of the play, how she is whole, too, how anything can be repaired, how to accept herself and the various circumstances of past, present and future.

She tells Math, "I get to be reckless, skate it out. I fall a lot. Hard, on my back, and I stay there and look up at leaves. How they look like stitches holding the world together. ... And I'm under these leaves, and the light they let through, but my back is finally on concrete, on something that can't change."

The phrase "history of light" is taken from a love letter, written by her father to Susan, before meeting Soph's mother. In it, he makes up the word "aberrate," and Soph insists on reciting it to Math with pride. Because, to her, it's fine. It's beautiful. Even perfect.

It's interesting, too, that light has no boundaries, that it is always whole, and when it's broken into shadows, it's called something else.