A dark comedy about one family's attempts to keep out the "sickness" of the world by isolating themselves in a house where all the windows are covered with plastic, where the air-purifiers hum constantly, and where visitors are unwelcome.
Directed by:
Gregory Scott Campbell
Costume Design:
Alison Johnson
Stage Manager
Caitlin Reed
Lighting Design:
Andrew Cowles
Scenic Design:
Dirk Durosette
"Zayd Dohrn's Sick is recognizably a Luna Theater production: a play with big ideas that will fit on a small stage, stylistically pushing the parameters of realism, commenting on some aspect of life in contemporary society. Director Gregory Campbell excavates the big idea here contained in the various understandings of the title. . . The issue, of course, is not just a sick family, but a world full of toxicity, a sick society created by a sick culture. Jim is both appalled and in some odd way envious: His own normal upbringing may have damned his art to normalcy. If ever somebody should know about bizarre upbringings, the playwright, Zayd Dohrn, should. His parents were the Weather Underground leaders Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, and they lived in hiding under assumed names until he was 4. Eventually his mother went to prison, where she read Winnie-the-Pooh to him on visiting day. Beyond this, Dohrn's inspiration for the play came from living in Beijing during the SARS crisis, when everybody was wearing protective masks. The play's point seems to be that although the world is unquestionably a dangerous place, the Emily Dickinson option (great poet who was a virginal hermit) is not a happy or healthy one. In one of those odd fortuitous moments, my fortune cookie at a meal after the show read "A ship in harbor is safe, but that's not why ships are built." (read full review)
8pm
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7pm
866-811-4111
Order up to 2 hours before show time
Funding: Wyncote Foundation, Philadelphia Cultural Fund, Samuel S. Fels Fund, Charlotte Cushman Foundation and viewers like you!