Memory: Half Life
Half Life is a full-length drama by John Mighton, which asks the question: “What shines through when memory fades away?”
The play takes place in a nursing home and revolves around two elderly residents, Clara and Patrick, who meet and fall in love, rekindling what may have been a wartime romance that neither can quite remember. Half Life is a story about joy, suffering, and memory that addresses themes of freedom, friendship, and loss.
Standing People Together is directing and co-producing Half Life along with the Hurleyville Performing Arts Centre. Performances are scheduled for December 8th and 9th, 2023. We plan to use the production to facilitate conversations and awareness in our community – diverse in age, background, and class – around issues relating to our older citizens who call this place home, and who will one day be us. These may be family members or those living alone or in retirement communities, who might find themselves isolated or uncared for, no longer respected as they once were. Their values, ideas, life experiences, professional skills, and deep local/rural knowledge slip away when we need to remember or call upon them.
We are delighted to announce our first event, a full play reading of Half Life, on June 24 at 6:00 followed by an opportunity for the audience to enrich the production, drawing upon their own experiences and engaging with the actors.
Standing People Together is a local program of the organization Waste for Life, which draws on education, art, community development, and nature-based programming to enhance connections to one another and to our shared environment.
Location
Organizer
Waste for Life
Website
https://www.wasteforlife.org/spt/Waste for Life supports educational and community strategies that actively facilitate systemic environmental and social justice change. Our recently launched program, "Standing People Together", emerges from observations working alongside many threatened communities throughout the world, of the need for a critical reconnection of people to people and people to nature. Our Forest Exploratorium, based on our home site of Cala Munda, in Hankins, NY, provides nature-based play and learning for children, professional development for teachers, and a retreat to explore environmentally just alternatives that foreground these connections.
