Well is a funny and touching comedy about mothers and daughters, mind over body, social activism and theatre itself. Lisa, the onstage playwright, attempts a memory play about her force-of-nature mother, Ann, who though constantly ill manages to heal a community. Besides Lisa and her mom, the show presents doctors and fellow patients at the hospital to which Lisa goes when she finds herself beset by the same sort of disabling allergies as her mother. We are also introduced to residents of the Lansing area, which Ann Kron organized to become a community. (From stageagent.com)
Told as a memory play by Lisa, the onstage playwright, about her mother Ann, the play combines ideas of social activism, mind over body, and experiments in theatrical form. As Lisa recounts her childhood in Lansing, Michigan, and beyond to answer the question “What makes us WELL?” her planned “multicharacter theatrical exploration of issues of health and illness both in the individual and in a community” spins hilariously out of control.
Emerging director Bree Bridger is excited to take on the piece, “Finding wellness in our lives and our community is more complicated than a self-help book, an online op-ed, or an inspirational hashtag can cover,” she said. “This is no ‘well-made play’; like life, it loses its place, comes together only to fall apart again, and has a broad scope. As the carefully crafted narrative unravels, we find what it takes to get a group of different people in any setting to improve their mutual wellbeing. We look forward to transforming Studio 101 into the lovely Kron home, and sweeping our cast and audience into the play’s dysfunction all around them.”
Well was developed by commission at Dixon Place and co-presented with the Public Theater in New York. The workshop production received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Lucille Lortel Foundation as part of New York Now, the Public’s annual play reading festival.
Well runs January 18 through February 3, 2018, in Studio 101 at Spring Street Studios, in the heart of the Washington Avenue Arts District. Tickets are on sale now at www.mildredsumbrella.com. For more information, call 832-463-0409 or e-mail info@mildredsumbrella.com.