This play, funnily enough, did not grow out of my experience with a pandemic, nor did it start as a play. It started as a screenplay, an idea to get two of the most talented actors I know to work with me (hehee). Then, well... A pandemic happened. For a while I couldn’t touch it- it too closely mirrored what was happening in my own life, and a small part of me was worried I had somehow ushered in a malevolent cosmic force. 

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And then, somehow, it became my project, a thing to keep me sane. I was lucky enough to develop it with the most wonderful group of co-conspirators- writer’s groups, friends, grandparents and now the lovely people you see in your program, who showed such interest in the world that I was able to shake some of my own malaise and turn it into something. We set out to film it, but the idea as film just wasn’t it. It was missing something- an immediacy, and oddly, the proper stakes. We need to be in the room with these people as they are making their decisions. We need to be present in their indecision, and anger and grief and joy, in order for it to feel real. They cannot escape their circumstances as much as we cannot escape ours, so it felt like a cheat to leave the audience with the chance to leave. 

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I write what I am afraid of, and what I hope for. As Kellon says, I am afraid of losing some of my own siblings, biological and otherwise, more than I am of my own life, and this play is my attempt at an answer to that fear. I can’t fix it, but I can ask what we should do with it. I still don’t know. Maybe y’all will. 

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Thank you so much for coming. Enjoy the show.

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-Mary Frances Noser