In 2019, I wrote The Bronze Lining, a 10-minute dramedy, with 2 great female roles. It’s about estranged sisters who attempt to reconnect during a hike after their mother’s death. There’s a lot of damage between them, stemming not only from some traditional sibling rivalry, but also from how each one handled the sickness of their mother, the process of dying, and now, the process of grieving. You can read an excerpt of the play here or get the whole play here.
This play was originally inspired by a painting, as part of The Living Art Event, a collaboration between visual artists of the Ossining Arts Council and the performing artists of Westchester Collaborative Theater (WCT). Jill Kiefer's piece, "Such a Bewilderness...", drew me in. I loved the richness, the muddiness, the twists, the brown and white and black, the textures, and that dragonfly escaping the mire into the air. The sisters in The Bronze Lining are also entrapped in their shared history, intertwined in the muddiness of complicated relationships that ebb and flow, damage and repair. Siblings have a connection that is going to bind them forever—although what sisters Mindy and Anne choose to do with that bond in the future, especially now that both of their parents are gone, is uncertain.
The production of this play has had its own complicated history, not without grief. In January 2020, at our first round of auditions, I met the director slated for this festival, Joe Albert Lima. He was smart, good-natured, experienced, and I immediately felt I could trust him with my play. He apologized for being a bit out of breath and coughing occasionally; he used an inhaler and mentioned his asthma had been bothering him. Tragically, less than a week later, he was hospitalized and passed away. While I didn’t know him well or long, I was shocked and pained by this loss, especially for his family and close friends. The theater community also felt this loss as he had a long history as a director in the area and was a founding member of WCT.
Meanwhile, covid-19 was making more and more headlines abroad.
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