W;t, 2000-01 Season Archive

The Cast
Vivian . . . . . Sandra Gray
Dr. Kelekian . . . . . Thomas Kennedy
E.M. Ashford. . . . . Carole Ries
Susie . . . . . Anne K. Hollis
Jason . . . . . Justin Buoy
Student/Technician/Fellow . . . . . Jessica Kitchner
Student/Technician/Fellow . . . . . Lori Bogner
Student/Technician/Fellow . . . . . Jamey Bentley
Student/Technician/Fellow . . . . . Juan Perez

Production Staff
Director . . . . . Penny Weiner
Set & Lighting Design . . . . . Tony Naylor
Costume Design . . . . . Karen Miller
Music composed and
performed by . . . . . Drake Mikkelson
Assistant Director. . . . . Melinda Eshbaugh
Stage Manager . . . . . Adriana Navarrete
Technical Direction . . . . . Tony Naylor
Scenic Studio Supervisor. . . . . Lynn Wilson
Cover Art . . . . . Barbara Waterman-Peters
Publicity . . . . . Leslie Durham
Scene Shop Assistants . . . . . Dan Meyer,
Ron Faught, Sophia Huang, Brett Oxendale,
Dustin Smith, Melinda Eshbaugh,
David DeLoach

Special Thanks -- Lori Edwards,
Laura Dalrymple, Med Ventures
International, Inc., Tenth Street Medical,
Stormont-Vail Hospital,
and the Washburn Nursing Department.

Margaret Edson, Playwright
Margaret Edson teaches kindergarten in downtown Atlanta. After graduating from Smith College, Edison tended bar in Iowa, lived in a Dominican convent in Rome, and then returned to her native Washington, D.C. where she worked in the oncology/AIDS unit of a research hospital. It was this last experience that provided inspiration for W;t. Though she had moved on to a job at a mental health organization, her memories of the cancer and AIDS ward haunted her. She then took a position at a bike shop so she could channel her energy to write W;t. Since she had taken only one undergraduate course in poetry—one which she remembers as omitting John Donne and his sonnets—she buried herself in the library, studying both Donne and medical books on caner. After a year of writing, two theatres rejected her play. Meanwhile, she began the Master's program in English at Georgetown University. but discovered that her true passion was teaching when she joined a volunteer tutor program through her church.

Upon completing her degree, she accepted a job at an elementary school in Washington. Edson did not, however, stop believing in the power of W;t. She sent the play out once again, this time finding immense success. The play was first produced at California's South Coast Reparatory Theatre in 1995. It was then mounted at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven in 1997 and MCC Theatre and the Union Square Theatre in New York City in 1998 and 1999. By the time Edson won the Pulitzer Prize in 1999, she moved to Atlanta. She is frequently asked if she plans to leave teaching in order to devote herself to a life in the theatre. The Fall 1999 issue of At Play state her position clearly: "Learning to read--that's the biggest thing you learn in your whole life....It's the thing that opens your mind the most, that gives you the most power." Edson finds that life's most dramatic challenges are staged in the kindergarten classroom. She has no desire to cast herself in any role other than that of teacher.

John Donne, Poet
John Donne (1572-1631) is certainly one of the most complex and most difficult among the pantheon of English poets. He was a statesman in the court of James I, an Anglican divine, the dean of St. Paul's cathedral in London, the composer of ecstatically physical love poems and cynical denials of love, the author of probing, thought-provoking sermons, and the creator of nineteen "Holy Sonnets," in which he explored the dominant paradoxes of the Christian faith: submissions vs. free will, life vs. death, sin vs. grace, repentance vs. redemption, death vs. resurrection. Donne, though an ordained cleric and a Doctor of Divinity, continually struggled with the basic tenets of Christian doctrine. Perhaps because of his own recurrent ill-health, the early death of his beloved wife, or the loss of six of his twelve children, Donne was especially consumed by the reality of death and the spiritual implications of that reality. This preoccupation is reflected in many of his poems and is central to the sonnet at the core of Margaret Edson's play W;t—"Sonnet X" which begins "Death be not proud."

Donne's own struggles with self doubt and crises of faith are reflected in the language and meter of his poems which are characteristically rough, often strained, and sometimes shocking in their strange Juxtaposition of sounds and images. Critics frequently use the term "wit" to describe Donne's techniques; in this context the term implies intellectual acuity, the perception of similarities in

term with Donnean sleight of hand in the title of her play W;t, which evokes the critical use of the term as well as the key thematic question of the play—what separates life from death? Is it a mere breath—a comma? Or is the line between life and death a more sharply discordant break as signified by the semi-colon—and by Vivian Bearing's pain?

Perhaps we should best leave analysis of Donne to Professor Vivian Bearing, the self described scholar/impresario who says late in the play:

"The greatest wit—the greatest English poet, some would say—was John Donne. In the Holy Sonnets, Donne applied his capacious agile wit to the larger aspects of the human experience: life, death, and God.

In his poems, metaphysical quandaries are addressed, but never resolved. Ingenuity, virtuosity, and a vigorous intellect that jousts with the most exalted concepts: these are the tools of wit."

Well said, Professor Bearing.

J. Karen Ray
Profess of English