My new play A Nagging Feeling Best Not Ignored (which I'm currently performing on Wednesday nights) grew out of the January 6th insurrection. My last film, We Pedal Uphill was my very personal attempt to make sense of the climate of fear which seemed to take root in this country in the months and years immediately following the September 11, 2001 attacks. The first play of mine that was produced in New York, Bodily Function, grew out of an offhand remark made by a midlevel corporate executive about workplace morale and bathroom breaks. The comment was delivered casually, almost cynically over a brunch with friends in Boston. Maybe the fact that the man who made the comment was not a friend of mine but rather a friend of friends, kept me from asking a pointed follow-up question. And so for weeks afterward I was haunted by the values behind his remarks. And eventually found my way to a play about a woman who has reached the pinnacle of success in her career yet somehow finds herself not quite feeling what she always imagined she would.
For whatever reason, there usually is some kind of thorn or confounding riddle at the center of the scripts I write. I'm drawn to the details of how human beings cope. We are uniquely creative and optimistic animals most of the time and how we manage to overcome, work around or stumble through life's towering obstacles is, I think, where the most vivid storytelling lies.
So it shouldn't have surprised me to find that my latest play, A Nagging Feeling Best Not Ignored has left some audience members feeling a kind of emotional whiplash. The piece is a kind of attempt to capture something of the tenuous relationship to truth and reality we find ourselves swimming in these days. And so the man at the center of the piece is, to put it mildly, an unreliable narrator.
It's difficult to know what to believe as he leads us from one assertion to the next, not much of it able to be held by the same single reality of one person's life.
It turns out that after an hour of very dark laughter, distortions of the facts of our reality and the tension of an audience holding one man's future in their hands through their vote at the end of the show, people need a few min. to process what they've just been through.
And you told us as much in the feedback offered online after the first three performances.
Post-Show Process Conversations Led by Leading Thinkers in the Fields of Psychology, Government, the Arts, Sociology, History and the Law.
Meet our First 5 Esteemed Process Moderators
July 20, 2022
Victoria Pittman
Vicky Pittman is currently the Director of Education & Community Engagement for the Colonial Performing Arts Center in Keene, NH. She's been in this position for 14 years and in non-profit theatre performance, production and administration for close to 40 years. She has degrees in theatre and music and has worked and traveled in 16 countries. The Colonial has a team that curates a wide variety of famous artists such as David Sedaris, Trombone Shorty, Alvin Ailey but Vicky's role focuses more on curating more specialized Indigenous artists, dancers, even interactive theatre. The Colonial has started to bring artists outside of the theatre into locations that are unusual and unexpected. Vicky is currently expanding her curatorial role to include works around mental health, trauma, and human connection. She is passionate about the performing arts and how they can bring something to an audience for the first time, something humorous, inspiring and challenging. And maybe even downright uncomfortable.
July 27, 2022
Dr. Cheryl Arutt
Dr. Cheryl Arutt is a clinical & forensic psychologist and Certified EMDR therapist based in Los Angeles. As a specialist in the nexus between creativity & mental health, Dr. Cheryl helps people identify how adaptations to a source of distress often outlive their usefulness, providing guidance and inspiration to navigate life from a place of wholeness. A passionate advocate for survivors of trauma, Dr. Cheryl also serves on the Board of the national nonprofit PAVE, dedicated to shattering the silence of trauma and violence. Dr. Cheryl is currently Access Hollywood’s go-to psychologist for trauma issues, a frequent psychological expert on networks including CNN, HLN and DiscoveryID, and speaks internationally about post-traumatic growth. Dr. Cheryl is the Founder of Creative Resilience, online education courses for busy creatives to find their voice, their power, and deep, authentic access to themselves. For more information, please visit askdrcheryl.com & thecreativeresilience.com.
August 3, 2022
Dr. Fred Roden
Dr. Frederick Roden is Professor of English at the University of Connecticut, where he serves on the faculties of Judaic Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. His work is defined by questions of gender, religion, and identity. The author/editor of eight books on subjects ranging from Victorian literature, sexology, to medieval mystics, he is currently engaged in two projects concerning individual and collective memory.
August 31, 2022
Hank Greenspan
Henry “Hank” Greenspan is an emeritus psychologist, oral historian and playwright at the University of Michigan who has been interviewing, writing about, and teaching about genocide and its survivors since the 1970s. He is the author of On Listening to Holocaust Survivors: Beyond Testimony and numerous articles on memory and its retelling. His award-winning play, REMNANTS, is also based on his decades of sustained conversations with survivors. The play was originally produced for radio and distributed on NPR. Greenspan has since presented REMNANTS as a one-person stage performance at more than 300 venues worldwide. When asked whether he sees the glass as half-empty or half-full, Hank has replied: “Wait…it’s wet?” www.henrygreenspan.com
September 7, 2022
Patricia Morgne Cramer
Patricia Morgne Cramer is Associate Professor of English at the University of Connecticut at Stamford. A Virginia Woolf scholar, she is co-editor of Virginia Woolf: Lesbian Readings. Her most recent publications on Woolf and Sexuality appear in the Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf and Woolf in Context (Cambridge University Press). This summer she is completing an article on Woolf and Socrates entitled The Waves: A Modernist Symposium. Her current book project, Virginia Woolf's 'The Waves: A Love Story,' addresses the abuse of elite boys in public schools through Woolf's eyes.
Tickets are still available for the July 27, August 3, August 10, August 24, August 31 and September 7 performances. Visit Hear Me Out Monologues for box office info.
