Writing for Very Dim Lighting

Directing a show has about a million and a half chores – everything from deciding what the heck to be doing in the first place – to picking up the feet trompled programs from the audience floor after a performance. BUT one chore that tends to fall of the radar for me every year is the director’s note for the program. I always wonder that I need to say in those paragraphs that my production doesn’t seem to say already. I have often felt I needed to explain all that my production COULDN’T realize in paragraph form for the audience. It gave me a way out of my simple shortcomings as a director. Director’s notes can be that place to thank everyone and their mother for all that they have given to this production. But if they are waiting to see their name in a program, I have done a terrible job in grateful for their work along the way. So I no closer to the purpose of these words – but I do offer my thinking for Shadow Box that I am toying with – – I would certainly love to get your thoughts.

Tragically, every year I have been here at DA we hear of some teenager associated with the school that has passed away. This year alone I know of both a death and worse, a suicide, that deeply affected the student body. I have always heard that for these horrendous events there are grief counselors that are available to any student that needs the help in owning the news. What a
blessing that is! I do wonder, however, what these counselors would actually say to these teenagers that would bring any relief or understanding. I cannot imagine that responsibility. Here you
have teenagers that are intrinsically emotional facing sadness, anger and emotional pain with a deeper range then they have ever felt. They have no precedent or emotional repertoire for this kind of loss.

Ever since my brief experience dealing with hospice in my teenage years, I have loved the work of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross M.D. in her quintessential text On Death and Dying and On Grief and Grieving. When I was young they helped me to make sense of tragedy in my family. I say great comfort in understanding of the stages of grief: Anger, Bargaining, Depression , Acceptance and finally HOPE.
Shadow Box was the first play that expressed these stages in dealing in dramatic form. I am hoping that with the phenomenal, passionate
members of my cast and crew we can open some kind of awareness or dialogue about grief and give some ray of light in this seemingly dark place.

Shadow Box is far from a dark and sad play. The entire company of Shadow Box hopes that you find it very affirming and full of light. We hope that you are reminded one more time how valuable life is and how not a single second should be wasted. In the words of Shadow Box:

Someone should have said it a long time ago.
When you were young.
Someone should have said, this living
This life
This lifetime
These things you have
This smell, this touch.
This taste.
This breath.
This moment.
It doesn’t last forever.