“It is an eye opener to how people feel when loved ones die,” said Tyler Sims, Director of The Shadow Box.
Have you ever been being told of an impending death of a close family member? How would you react?
Would you be optimistic enough to survive seeing life fade in people you love? Would you be angry with yourself for not knowing how to hold on to them?
To examine the above, Stage Fright Student Productions is bringing The Shadow Box, a Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winning play, to BC campus this week.
In this compelling, dramatic triptych, three terminal cancer patients dwell in separate cottages on hospital grounds. They have all reached the end of their treatment and have agreed to take part in a psychological scheme to be interviewed by a psychiatrist.
The three are attended and visited by family and close friends: Agnes and her mother Felicity, estranged further by the latter’s dementia; Brian and Beverly whose marital complications are exacerbated by Brain’s new lover, Mark; and Joe and Maggie, unready for the strain of Joe’s impending death and its effect on their teenage son.
As the play proceeds, the audience will be able to find out more about the protagonists’ lives before their ill health and see their respective attitudes towards death unravel.
The Shadow Box first debuted in Broadway on March 31, 1977. It was adapted for a television movie in 1980 by Michael Cristofer, actor and playwright.
“The purpose of this show is to let student direct a show and for the actors to grow as actors,” added Sims.
This BC production is starring Elizabeth Craswell, Evan Christopher, Sion Shauny Jang, Vincent Agustus Pham, Rebecca Prows, Jennifer Weisner, Ross Johnson, Savannah Shaffer and Corey Grant; the cast has been working on the show for two months.
The Shadow Box is playing April 12 to 14 at 7:30 p.m. each night in the E-Building’s Stop Gap Studio Theatre. Doors are open to the public at 7:00 p.m. Tickets are $5 and are available at the door or through brownpapertickets.com.