Informed Consent

Just got back from seeing Informed Consent by Cleveland Playhouse.   It is the centerpiece of their New Ground New Theater Festival.   Good theater makes you feel something.  This was an amazing play, but it is not a cheery work.  In fact, I left feeling quite angry at the main character.   The play is based on a true story too.

Informed Consent is about a gross violation of informed consent.   The main character, Jillian, is a genetic anthropologist who lost her mother to early onset Alzheimer's disease.  She is going to develop the condition herself.   She gets a job to study an American Indian tribe for diabetes.  Blood to this group is sacred.   She then selfishly writes a hugely vague informed consent document and runs additional tests, embarrassing the tribe, causing emotional distress, and openly disagreeing with their mythology.

There are only 5 actors in the show who play multiple roles.  They also serve as chorus and narrator group.  This is an excellent show, especially if you are in the medical profession.   Informed consent is very very important.  This play shows how that violating it can break so many more things than trust.

'night, Mother

We just saw 'night, Mother at Beck Center for the Arts.   Amazingly powerful.   Steve and I both cried.   A woman, Jessie, portrayed by Laura Perrotta, is about to commit suicide.  She has set all of her affairs in order, and she tells her mother, Thelma, played by the extraordinary Dorothy Silver.  

The play is one continuous act performed without an intermission in 90 minutes.  The set was extremely realistic, a living room through dining room and kitchen with running water.

The family has troubles.  Jessie is a divorcee who has epilepsy and a wayward son.  She decided at Christmas that she would end her life, seeing that all she does is keep Thelma company.  You can feel the emotional scars ripping open fresh as the two women on stage talk to one another.   It should not be missed.  It's playing until May 4th at the Beck Studio Theater.

33 Variations

We just got back from seeing 33 Variations at the Beck Center.  It isn't a musical, but music is prevalent throughout the play.  The first thing you see when entering the theater is the grand piano at the side of the stage.  The pianist stays there through both acts and illustrates the musical work in the show.

We see two parallel stories in this show.  A musicologist struggling with ALS studies Beethoven's variations on a waltz, while we see the composer's struggles with hearing loss.   It is extremely well interwoven.  We see the musicologist and her daughter and their strained relationship, and we see the composer and his servant and the person who commissioned the variations mull over deadlines and expectations.  In fact, a good comparison is drawn between the daughter (in varied career choices that her mother is unhappy with) and the original waltz, which the original composer fears that Beethoven is mocking through variations.

I enjoyed this show because it touches two very important facets of my life, music and medicine.   I highly recommend seeing it.