Casting Announced for Opalescent Productions'
Untying Love
A New Drama by Peggy Willens
October 13 – November 4, 2012
Thursday-Saturday at 8pm / Sunday at 3pm
Previews: Saturday, October 13 @ 8pm & Sunday, October 14 @ 3pm
Opening Night: Monday, October 15 @ 7pm
TADA! Theater
15 West 28th Street, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10001
Tickets are $18, $15 for Students and Seniors.
For tickets, visit:
https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/cal/34111
or call 866-811-4111
Runtime: 90 Minutes with no intermission
http://www.UntyingLove.info
New York, NY (September 12, 2012) – Opalescent Productions presents Untying
Love, a new drama about the end of life and letting go by Peggy Willens
to run at TADA! Theater, 15 West 28th Street, NYC from October 13 to November
4, 2012. Emma Berry directs a cast of eight, including Jed Dickson* (Off
B'way: The Mask), Nancy Hess* (B'way: Phantom, Chicago, Kiss of the Spider
Woman, Goodbye Girl), Rodrigo Lopresti (TV: The Quarter Life, Connected,
The Black Donnelly's), Simon MacLean* (New York: The Crucible (ArcLight),
Biography (Mint)), Marie Marshall* (NY: House of Mirth (Metropolitan);
LA: Woman of Manhattan, Psychopathia Sexualis (Zoo)), John Mateyko(New
York: Seussical), Nancy Nagrant* (New York: Naked in Encino, Family Dinner),
and Kyla Schoer* (Off B'way: The Awesome 80's Prom). *Appearing Courtesy
of Actors' Equity Association. AEA Approved Showcase.
In the tradition of Chekhov and Shepard, Untying Love is a raw and unblinking
view into the intimate moment when people embrace the ultimate act of family
love. The play is set in a hospice, where Steven’s mother is caught
between life and death. He doesn’t know how to help her. Sharing
stories, laughter and tears, his quirky family hopes to give his mother
a peaceful goodbye, free of pain and fear. Two supportive hospice
volunteers provide all the help they can. But something’s in the
way. Who’s not letting go, and why?
Director Emma Berry described it as “a stunning script of depth, one that
requires a first-class caliber of performance. It drew me back to
live theater after many years away.”
Untying Love can be viewed as a contrasting but complementary piece to
the Pulitzer Prize-winning Wit by Margaret Edson, with whom Willens attended
high school in Washington, DC. While Wit portrays the experience of a woman,
Dr. Vivian Bearing, in the last stages of ovarian cancer, in Untying Love
the dying patient remains offstage. And while Witis highly literary, including
flashbacks to Dr. Bearing's erudite lectures on the poetry of John Donne,
the characters in Willens' play struggle to communicate their most basic
hopes, fears and resentments. But the two plays share two themes:
that there are times when medical intervention can no longer help, and
that there is something in the human experience that cannot be understood
through intellect alone.
Untying Love is presented in a time when end-of-life issues, palliative
care and hospice care are receiving increased attention. Current
political debates about Medicare spending touch on the topic both obliquely
‒ about 25% of Medicare dollars are spent during the last year of a person’s
life[1]‒ and directly, as when the term “death panels” was coined for
a proposal to offer Medicare patients voluntary counseling about living
wills and end-of-life care options. The provision was deleted from
the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
Eighty percent of U.S. patients state that they don’t want aggressive
intervention and hospitalization once their disease reaches a terminal
phase,[2] and yet many people who want to die at home or in hospice do
not have that opportunity.
The palliative care and hospice communities work to help families acknowledge
what’s happening during the dying process while easing patients’ physical
and emotional pain. The hospice philosophy is to help people live
with dignity in their last days and weeks, with a chance to say their goodbyes
and to die in peace. There is, in short, such a thing as a good death.
Please note that Untying Love is not a political or “message” play, however.
It indelibly portrays one family’s journey through the end-of-life
moment.
"So many scripts aim to entertain rather than provoke,” Berry said,
“and this script is, in its own quiet way, utterly provoking.”
Untying Love is presented by Opalescent Productions. Director: Emmy
Berry; Scenic Design: Tim McMath; Costume Designer: Kristine Koury; Lighting
Designer: Lois Catanzaro; Fight Choreographer: Gael Schaefer; Stage Manager:Emily
Bible; Casting Director: Jamibeth Margolis, CSA; Publicist: Paul Siebold.
Emma Berry (Director) has directed over 100 mainstage plays and a wide
range of physically based performances in her native England as well as
Paris, Murcia and Krakow. In London, she led productions equivalent to
NYC's Off Broadway:Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet, Richard
II, Richard III; Pinter: The Room, No Man's Land, The Birthday Party. Elsewhere
in Europe: Antigone, L'Avare (Molière), American Buffalo, Who's Afraid
of Virginia Woolf, `Night, Mother; and many more. On Broadway, Emma served
as consulting dramaturge for Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. Training:
M.A. in Directing, Central School of Speech and Drama, London. Emma
also studied the practice of directors Staniewskia (Poland) and Mnouchkine
(France).
Peggy A. Willens (Playwright & Producer) studied playwriting with Tina
Howe in the Hunter College graduate program and Julie McKee at HB Studio.
She is a member of The Dramatists Guild of America, Inc. and the founder
of Opalescent Productions, LLC. Untying Love was selected as a Semi-Finalist
in the 2010 Hidden River Arts Playwriting Award competition. Peggy
holds a B.A. in Linguistics from Wesleyan University and an M.B.A. from
the Yale School of Management.
This presentation is not a production by TADA! Youth Theater. For
information about TADA! programs, please visit http://www.tadatheater.com.
TICKET AND SCHEDULE INFORMATION:
$18, $15 for Students and Seniors
https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/cal/34111
or call 866-811-4111
October 13 – November 4, 2012
Thursday-Saturday at 8pm / Sunday at 3pm
Previews: Sat., October 13 @ 8pm & Sun., October 14 @ 3pm
Opening Night: Monday, October 15 @ 7pm
TADA! Theater
15 West 28th Street, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10001
[1] http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/20/4/188.full
[2] http://www.dartmouthatlas.org/data/topic/topic.aspx?cat=18