Last spring, I struggled to find a play that was right for this year. The pandemic wreaked havoc on the performing arts; I hadn’t directed a traditional show indoors on our auditorium stage in years. We had no idea how many students would be coming out for auditions, and we knew those that did would need lots of training. As would all of our student designers and most of our crew. It was one of our graduating seniors who suggested Heartwood to me. I first saw and fell in love with the show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival when I was there with students in 2017. The following fall, I shared a video of that production with the cast of She Kills Monsters. It made enough of an impact that the seniors still recalled it four years later.
The more I thought about Heartwood, the more I knew it was just what we needed. It offered flexible casting and an opportunity to train both cast and crew with many new creative challenges so that they could grow their repertoires. More importantly, it would give the creative team and the audiences a very important roadmap for our lives right now. All of us have experienced grief and trauma over the last few years. We lost all sense of normalcy in March of 2020. We lost our trips to enjoy concerts and plays and to explore the world around us, our experiences in school as students and athletes and artists, our holidays and celebrations with friends and family. Many of us lost loved ones. Years later, we’ve found a new normal and are returning to the people, places, and activities we love, but things are not the same. The world is not the same as it was before March of 2020, and neither are we.
Some of us grieved our losses and moved on. Others of us are still struggling. The stages of grief are not neat and orderly. We don’t experience them in consecutive order and then move on with our lives. Sometimes we experience more than one stage at a time. Sometimes we move forwards and backwards among them. And sometimes, the grief comes in waves. We may reach acceptance but then be triggered by a date, a memory, a picture, or a smell -- and suddenly we are spiraling through anger or depression once again. Unfortunately, grief is a part of the human condition. But if we can feel grief, it means that we are also capable of experiencing great love and joy. If we recognize those stages of grief for what they are and accept them as a part of ourselves, we can move on. Just like Eleanor, we can choose our path forward instead of being overcome by our grief.
I’m grateful every day for the privilege of working with these amazing, talented, loving, creative, hilarious, resilient students. They regularly remind me not to take myself so seriously, not to get stuck in my own grief spirals. Hopefully the work that we’ve created together can make our audiences laugh, love, and think. Hopefully this map we’ve brought to life through Eleanor’s hero journey will help some of you when you need it.
Thank you for taking this journey with us tonight. I hope you enjoy the show as much as we’ve enjoyed producing it!
Alison Sussman
Director of Heartwood
Advisor of Thespian Troupe #7161
