Drifting

Drifting had it’s premiere showing in March 2015 as a workshop production at Dixon Place in New York City. Here is Theatre Wire’s review of that first showing:  

 http://www.nytheatre-wire.com/bb15031t.htm

In May 2015, in a strange turn of life's circles, Drifting played at the the theatre in Hershey that was once the barn of my boyhood home farmstead.  At the invitation and sponsorship by the Doctors Kienle Center for Humanistic Medicine and the Department of Humanities of the Penn State College of Medicine, the piece was followed each night by discussions with physicians, hospice workers, and medical ethicists. 

Andy’s frequent collaborator Bill Doan wrote this play exploring the boundaries between life and death for a person with a traumatic brain injury. In doing so, the play challenges us to think as much about how we want to die as we think about how we want to live. On a December night in 2012, Bill’s sister was going 47 mph when her car went off the road. An off-duty EMT happened on the accident and called on emergency crews to life-flight her to a nearby trauma center.

Much of the dialogue features She, who steps outside her lifeless body, and Me as they share loving and painful family stories and drift between consciousness and unconsciousness, life and death. Me and He navigate a different divide—whether to provide life-prolonging care with drugs and machines or to accept She’s inevitable death.