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From the Director:

What Scott McPherson’s deceptively simple story “Marvin’s Room” is about depends entirely upon your particular place in time on the Great Mandala. It is interesting to note that the title character in Marvin’s Room is never seen.  Mr. McPherson leaves most of the staging and set design up to the imagination of the production team, with the exception of the glass-tiled wall representing Marvin’s Room.  We can see the reflection of light bounced off of a mirror dancing in the glass tiles - the only activity that still brings joy to the elderly, dying patriarch of this sweet but broken family.  In the course of the play you will learn that Marvin cared for a wife dying of leukemia, raised his two daughters on his own, moved from Ohio to Florida to care for his sister Ruth, suffered two strokes, colon cancer, lost a kidney and sight in one eye, contracted diabetes, and is haunted by scary hallucinations. 

Marvin, (his name means "Mariner" or "Man of the Sea"), is at the center of his family's growing maelstrom of long-harbored resentments, guilty secrets, disappointments and love betrayed.  Marvin's life—and his slow journey towards death—affects each of us differently.  As we watch this courageously honest and intimate story unfold, we are reminded of our own journeys as we sail this oft-stormy sea we call “life.”

Have you had to make the tough choice between caring for another or following your own life path?  Have you realized that the nature or personality with which you were born may not be a comfortable match with your own parents, siblings, or even children?  Have you looked back on your childhood and realized that you didn't have a clue about the challenges your parents faced?  What guilty secret do you have that you would take to your grave rather than admit to another, yet long for someone to ask and to offer understanding and forgiveness?  Ultimately we are all trying to cope with our own mortality and decide how we will live our lives before our journey reaches the end.  Will we travel safely and always do the right thing, perhaps coming to the end of the journey with many unlived dreams?  Will we follow our dreams and come to the end of our journey with regrets for lost intimacy with those closest to us?  Will we meet our own demise with grace and dignity, or will we, and those around us, have to endure the painful test of a mind and a body that rage against the dying light?

Mr. McPherson wrote Marvin’s Room as he cared for his partner, cartoonist and activist Daniel Sotomayor who was dying from AIDS, to which Mr. McPherson would himself succumb just two years after Marvin’s Room premiered in 1990.  The absolute vulnerability of McPherson’s characters most certainly reflects the highs and lows and in-betweens of the playwright’s own struggle with mortality.  While the subject matter is at times dire, as humans we find humor at the odd and seemingly inappropriate moments while we are in the throes of tragedy.  Please feel free to laugh as heartily as you wish when these colorful characters find themselves in such moments.  Laughter through tears and healing through humor speaks powerfully to us all.  

Lisa Murphy Collins

April 2017