Well
"This play is not about my mother and me," begins the character of Lisa. But, of course, it is about her mother, and her mother's extraordinary ability to heal a changing neighborhood, despite her inability to heal herself. In this "solo show with people in it," Kron asks the provocative question: "Do we create our own illness?" The answers she gets are much more complicated than she bargained for as the play spins dangerously out of control into riotously funny and unexpected territory.
EXCERPT
(Lights come up as LISA enters and crosses to center stage. She carries a small stack of note cards. ANN KRON is sleeping in herLa-Z-Boy recliner.)
LISA (to the audience). Hello. Good evening. The play that we’re about to do deals with issues of ill ness and wellness. It asks the question: Why are some people sick and other peo ple are well? Why are some people sick for years and years and other people are sick for a while but then they get better? Why is that? What is the difference between those people?
This play is not about my mother and me. That is my mother there in that La-Z-Boy recliner, which is where she spends most of her time because she doesn’t feel well enough to get up and do other things—but it’s not about her. It’s not about how she’s been sick for years and years and years and I was sick as well but some how I got better. It’s not about how she was able to heal a neighborhood but she’s not able to heal herself. It’s not about those things but it does use those things as a vehicle for (reads from the top note card) “a multicharacter theatrical exploration of issues of health and illness both in the individual and in a community.”
ANN (groaning, still asleep) Oh dear Lord.
MULTIMEDIA
The New York Times, "In Sickness and In Health"
PURCHASE SCRIPT
Dramatic Publishing (Acting Edition)
Theatre Communications Group