tickets - who cares
WHO CARES: the caregiver interview project
(world premiere production)
January 9 - February 2, 2025
Venue:
Universalist National Memorial Church
1810 16th Street, NW, Washington, DC
Co-Written by Ari Roth, A. Lorraine Robinson, and Vanessa Gilbert
with original stand-up material from Jim Meyer
and excerpts from the work of M.T. Connolly
and her book “The Measure of Our Age: Navigating Care, Safety, Money, and Meaning Later in Life”
Directed by Kathryn Chase Bryer
The prevalence of care giving in our lives seems to be everywhere these days. And yet the job of providing long-term support to loved ones contending with memory loss often leads to hardship, private and professional invisibility, shaming, with a broken health care system as insufficient back-up.
Based on dozens of deeply personal interviews with local theater colleagues, elder justice advocates, and close friends whose lives have been disrupted – but then also transformed – by unexpected care taking, a circle is formed to support, learn from, confess, vent and strengthen one another.
Voices Festival Productions' new play in development exposes fault lines within families, and occasionally between experts whose advice can be the last thing a family needs to hear – or is able to pursue. Interviews lead to encounters of grace, and sometimes humor, as a work of art is fashioned from personal revelation, church basement gatherings, memory cafes, cabarets, and art room exhibition halls to unveil newly generative communities of care.