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W;t
May 14 - 30th, 2010
8:00pm Thursday - Saturday
3:30pm Sunday
Vivian Bearing, Ph.D., a renowned professor of English who has spent years studying and teaching the metaphysical sonnets of JohnDonne, has been diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer. During the course of her illness, Vivian comes to reassess her life and herwork with a profundity and humor that are transformative both for her and the audience. Winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
W;t Cast
- Vivian Bearing, Ph.D - Dawna Diaz
- Harvey Kelekian, M.D. - Joe Bowes
- Jason Posner, M.D. - Adam Hamilton
- Susie Monahan, R.N., B.S.N. - Kayleigh Yancey
- E.M. Ashford, D. Phil - Linda Lagle
- Mr. Bearing/Tech 1/Crash Team Head - George Johnson
- Tech 2/Fellow 2/Student 3/Crash Team - Amie Gilligan
- Fellow 3/Student 1/Crash Team - Paul May
- Fellow 1/Student 2/Crash Team - Eric Fallabel
- Tech 3/Fellow 4/Student 4/Crash Team - Jamie Burroughs
The Baynet, May 16, 2010: W;t - A Compelling Drama that Rivets the Audience
LEXINGTON PARK
- 5/16/2010
By Andrea Hein
Colored lights flash.
A woman in a hospital gown walks forward, pulling an IV drip on a pole with
her. The woman wears a ball cap to cover her bald head, and informs the
audience that she has stage IV metastatic ovarian cancer—and that there is no
stage five.
This is the beginning of Margaret Edson’s W;t, a powerful
play about life, death and the human condition. The main character, Vivian
Bearing, PhD, is a teacher and scholar of seventeenth century poetry,
particularly the metaphysical works of John Donne. Vivian possesses an
incomparable knowledge of her subject matter, and has little patience for those
who don’t fully devote their intellectual ability to the teachings at hand.
Ever the professor, Bearing introduces the audience to the
works of Donne, transforming the audience into both students and witnesses to
her career and life. Vivian shares her past experiences through a series of
flashbacks, while intermittently returning to the present to chronicle her
increasingly difficult struggle with cancer. The audience witnesses her
transition from an authoritative professor full of life to a helpless patient
as Vivian learns to suffer with dignity. She uses her gift of wit to attempt to
deal with the paradox of time, the loneliness of cancer and the isolation
chemotherapy brings. The once unshakably independent women is reduced to
complete dependence on her nurse to care for her basic physical and emotional
needs as she undergoes eight months of harsh chemotherapy.
The character of Vivian Bearing is powerfully portrayed by
Dawna Diaz, who completely devoted herself to the role and even shaved off her
hair to complete the transformation into her character. “It was emotionally
difficult and draining to prepare for the role,” Diaz says. “There was a little
fear and trepidation when it came time to shave my head, but it’s such a small
sacrifice compared to what people sacrifice when they go through cancer.”
W;t touches the audience in a way that only a piece about
universal humanity can. “Most people know someone who has been affected by
cancer,” says W;t director Missy Bell. “This play is an amazing piece of
literature, a masterpiece of writing. The audience is left with the message
that all the things in life that we think are important really aren’t. It’s the
people in our lives that are important.”
At times funny, and at other times difficult and wrenching
to watch, W;t is ultimately a rewarding and introspective experience for
audience members. When asked what insight Diaz personally acquired from portraying
the role, she said: “It helped me reevaluate my life, to appreciate the moment
I am in now.”
W;t is being presented by The Newtowne Players at the Three
Notch Theater in Lexington Park from May 14 through 30. Tickets are available
for purchase at the door or online athttp://www.newtowneplayers.org/.
The Enterprise, May 21, 2010: In her NTP debut, Diaz delivers Vivian, and through her 'W;t'
Friday, May 21, 2010
By DICKSON MERCER
Staff writer
"W;t" (or "Wit") was written by Margaret Edson, a kindergarten teacher living in Atlanta. It was her first play.
The drama debuted in California in the mid-1990s and was next performed in New Haven, Conn., with Kathleen Chalfant performing the lead role: Dr. Vivian Bearing, a 50-year-old English professor undergoing an experimental, and ultimately doomed, radiation therapy for metastatic ovarian cancer. Chalfant reprised the part in 1998 when the play debuted Off-Broadway, received great reviews and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and more.
Now it's onstage at Three Notch Theatre. Dawna Diaz, 47, of Great Mills, a mission controller at Patuxent River Naval Air Station, has the lead role, as a hardboiled scholar of 17th-century English poetry and John Donne's Holy Sonnets. Vivian has chosen pure criticism, a kind untainted by emotion, over people, and seems to have no relationships of any kind. Her course is the hardest on campus.
All we really know, however, is her current state. We learn quickly that the play is one act which lasts for almost two hours and that Vivian has as much time left to live. We know, too, that for eight months she has lived through as many cycles of treatments and has been handled by staff how she handled Holy Sonnetts: from a distance, coldly, without feeling.
For five years, the Newtowne Players has brought you lots of comedy. Even with the dramas, and with some of the stuff you might call borderline edgy, there has alway been a space where you could sneak off to for spell, throw your head back and laugh.
Says Thom Esposito, the head of NTP's play selection committee, "‘W;t,' to me, is a very emotional, very draining show. You don't leave here with your belly hurting because you laughed so much. … It's a change for us because we generally lean to the lighter side of things … I think our audience will allow us to do this one."
Those who do, meanwhile, will not experience the demystification of Vivian. They will, however, be privy to her end-of-life revelation, which is also the play's emotional floodgate.
In that sense, they will not come to know Vivian better, really. It's more like entering one's physical space — staying there, listening, staying there.
For two hours, Vivian, and Diaz, will not once leave the stage. Through Diaz, you will know Vivian, because this much I can tell you: Diaz, though very much a people person, has taken Vivian's experience and melded it into her own.
It might come as a surprise, though, that this is Diaz' first time on stage without a script in her hands.
She grew up in Wichita, Kan., and moved to St. Mary's County in 1981, after she had joined the U.S. Navy and was hired on the base. Eight years ago, at the College of Southern Maryland, she got involved with a readers theater group that no longer exists.
She learned about the role of Vivian from her son (from her first marriage), Stephen Rumpf, who plays a tech in "W;t" and recently held the lead role in NTP's staging of the Italian comedy "Over the River and Through the Woods." Diaz ordered the script, read it. "It was just such a great part to flop in and out of so many emotions," she says before a press review. "It's so complex and so difficult. I wanted that piece. I didn't want a fluff-type piece."
A decade after moving to the county, Diaz was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Her thyroid was removed, and she received one high dose of radiation. Her life since has been one of trying to get it right: She takes thyroid medication daily, and sudden shifts in diet or weight can send her spiraling into a state of hyperthyroidism.
After her radiation procedure she had to wait in a room by herself until her radiation level subsided. For a short time, she was told to stay away from young children and pregnant women and to only eat using plastic silverware.
She did not, however, lose her hair.
She lost her hair, and her eyebrows, when the director, Missy Bell, choose her among 30 who auditioned to take on the role of Dr. Vivian Bearing.
A couple hours before the last rehearsal, Diaz' husband, Domingo Diaz (he goes by Ming), opens the door to their home. Inside, Diaz, dressed in pajama pants and a hooded sweatshirt, races down the steps and sits down at the kitchen table, where rests a coconut cream pie she promised to her father and Ming's makeup kit. Diaz sits down and closes her eyes as Ming applies a layer of white powder. Around town, Diaz explains, she's been wearing a wig.
Ming, an electronics consultant who has long been involved with theater, handles makeup for some local productions and also has a side business doing clown makeup. He's self-taught, he says, while applying lines and shadowing to achieve an emaciated, cadaverous look.
The night before last was a press preview. Tonight is a dress rehearsal. Tomorrow is sponsor's night. Then it's opening night.
When a visitor suggests Diaz might be exhausted, she and Ming chuckle, in part, it seems, because they're always so busy. For one, they're the co-presidents of the Aqua Squares Dance Club. "I've put my whole life on hold right now," says Diaz, "so I can be rested and in the right mind to do this."
"It seems like a lot of people would prefer to start with a fluff-type role," the visitor suggests.
"This is the kind of role that doesn't come along often," she explains. "So while I probably would have liked a smaller role to start, the timing of this was just perfect."
Speaking of timing, it becomes apparent that Diaz' parents have arrived from Kansas. Their rental car has pulled up in the driveway.
"Turn around 180," Ming says softly to his wife. "All the way around."
Over at Three Notch, the stage is barren, the back of it wrapped with black cloth from floor to ceiling. Until now, the spinning set has been typically used, to rotate sets. For "W;t," though, three or four people backstage will be ready to spin the set by hand to deliver a prop from the rear of the stage to beneath the spotlight, or to create the impression of moving without moving at all.
Before Diaz arrives, you find Bell's husband, Michael Bell, the technical director, tinkering with a crucial part of the set. Minutes later, Missy arrives with their two children in tow. And as more actors, tech people, producers and general helpers enter the theater, it fills steadily with chatter and a palpable energy.
Someone sweeps the stage. Someone procures a purple Popsicle.
In "W;t," Vivian says pacing is her preferred mode of exercise. A couple minutes before the rehearsal starts, Diaz, too, is pacing with her script, whispering lines, her body wrapped in two hospital gowns. A ball cap covers her head. She has not yet slipped off her moccasins.
When it's time, the lights go up; the stage fills up with swirling, kaleidoscopic lights. An IV bag hangs off the hook of a pole on wheels that Diaz drags with her across the stage.
Lately, Diaz wakes up some mornings and wonders if she can go to "the dark place" so many nights? What will the toll be on her psyche, her body?
Still, it's fairly clear she possesses the fortitude.
Vivian stands center-stage, at the edge, looks out blankly and delivers the first line of the play — a question.
"Hi. How are you feeling today?"
If you go Directed by Missy Bell, the Newtowne Players's production of "W;t" will continue through May 30. Performances will be held at 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and 3:30 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $15, $12 for senior citizens, students and military and $10 for groups of 10 or more. Thursday tickets are $10. The theater is at 21744 S. Coral Drive, Lexington Park. Call 301-737-5447. Go towww.newtowneplayers.org.
The Enterprise, May 28: With one weekend left, ‘W;t' abounds inside Three Notch Theater
Friday, May 28, 2010
By DICKSON MERCER
Staff writer
Margaret Edson's "W;t" shows us the last hours of Dr. Vivian Bearing,an enigmatic English professor who has lived through eight, month-long, high-dose cycles of radiation for metastatic ovarian cancer.
Within a black set, amidst hospital beds and examination tables, Vivian, the protagonist and narrator, guides us through the past and present and tells us what's to come. It is not her intention to give away the plot, Vivian says, though she's fairly sure she dies.
Last Friday, the cover of Southern Maryland Weekend described this play as "a heavy hitter, an unflinchingly austere, modern drama." On Sunday, I saw how I'd missed the mark.
Vivian, courageously inhabited by Dawna Diaz, can actually be quite funny. Early on, in fact, there are as many reasons to laugh as there are to shed tears later. My description was derived from NTP's press preview, held four days before opening night, and I suppose it now matters little whether it was a case of there being something missing or of me not getting it. What matters now is that the difference between the preview and Sunday's show was the difference between a good play and a great (nearly professional) one.
That transformation has a lot to do with Diaz, a 47-year-old mission controller for Patuxent River Naval Air Station, a mediator, a survivor of thyroid cancer and — as we now know — an actress made for this part. She shaved off her hair and eyebrows for this part; ultimately, though, her emotional transformation, and the depths she plundered, is what's so remarkable, perhaps even haunting.
Pronounced "wit," the semicolon placed in the title of this 1999 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama refers to an ongoing discussion regarding punctuation in one of John Donne's Holy Sonnets. In the world of Donne scholarship, Vivian is a "force," she tells us. In her rigorous course, she calls Donne "the greatest wit."
Vivian, though, is quite a wit herself. And Diaz, who seemed to pick up her character's physicality and emotional tailspin in a snap, has, with time, proven her ability to tease that dry wit out of Edson's demanding (and incredible) script. This is the first time that Diaz has acted on a stage without the benefit of the script in her hand. Her previous experience includes a former reader's theater group and Sotterley Ghost Walk, which is produced by her husband, Ming Diaz, who also handles this show's makeup.
In "W;t," we learn that Vivian chose a life devoid of human interaction (something most people consider as vital as oxygen). She has completed the treatment; it hasn't eradicated the cancer. Now she has hours left to live.
Although her life has been dedicated to Donne scholarship, we learn that her last contribution will be one to medicine, as no patient before her has handled such intense radiation therapy. For the doctors, then, she's an incredible data source, a pathway to more knowledge. Vivian, noticing the similarities between their study of her and her study of Donne, mostly accepts this: In her words, when the doctors arrive in the room and ask her, again and again, "How are you feeling?," she holds still and looks cancerous. "It takes less acting every time." Her threshold for radiation might be greater than anyone's previously, but we also see her spirit get broken — it breaks us, too. For 47 years her most authentic relationship has been with a very dead poet. Maybe she should have pursued human connections.
As much as this play engages the soul, NTP's spinning set and radiant, colorful lighting also make it engaging to the eye. The play — one, two-hour act — flies by in a flash. Director Missy Bell has assembled, and aptly guided, a great cast. While Diaz is the focal point (she never leaves the stage), the supporting characters (particularly Adam Hamilton, who plays Dr. Jason Posner, and Kayleigh Yancey, who plays a nurse) are terrific. Michael C. Bell, the director's husband, also deserves credit for his technical contributions (lights, officially).
On Sunday, however, Bell was called upon to sub as a hospital tech. As well, George Johnson, an ensemble character who also appears briefly as Vivian's father, covered for Joe Bowes as Harvey Kelekian, M.D., and the show didn't seem to suffer as a result.
The Newtowne Players's production of Margaret Edson's "W;t" will conclude at 8 p.m. May 28 and 29 and 3:30 p.m. May 30. Tickets are $15, $12 for senior citizens, students and military. Directed by Missy Bell. The theater is at 21744 S. Coral Drive, Lexington Park. Call 301-737-5447. Go towww.newtowneplayers.org.
W;t Editorial, The Enterprise, June 4: A high-quality show to savor
I recently attended The Newtowne Players production of "W;t" in Lexington Park. Unlike most plays, it did not attract a large audience, the subject matter being perhaps difficult for some, and not really light entertainment. May I say however, it was probably the best performance I have seen at the theater. It was well written and well interpreted.
I sincerely hope that, although it may not have been a box office smash, the theater group will not shy away from this type of show. Put on the usual fare of money-making entertainment most of the year, but please once in a while give us a show of this quality to savor.
Kathi Edwards, Lexington Park
