Current Theatre Performance

CONTACT
Andrew M. Holmes
608/743-5727
Cell: 608/921-8254
aholmes@janesville.k12.wi.us

ANATOMY OF GRAY

May 6 – May 9, 2010
by Jim Leonard, Jr.
When June’s father dies, she prays for a healer to come to the small town of Gray, so that no one will ever suffer again; the next thing she knows, there’s a tornado, and a man in a balloon blows into town claiming to be a doctor. At first, the new doctor cures anything and everything, but soon the town’s preacher takes ill with a mysterious plague. And then the plague begins to spread. Set in Indiana during the late 1800s, Anatomy of Gray deals with death, loss, love, & healing in a unique coming of age story.

THE PLAYWRIGHT
Indiana native, JIM LEONARD, JR. gained notoriety while he was a student at Hanover College by penning The Diviners, which went on to win the American College Theatre Festival’s award for best play. Since then he has written many other successful plays and screenplays. Other works include They Dance Real Slow in Jackson and Crow and Weasel. His film work includes Close to Home (2005-2007) Night Visions (2001), My Own Country (1998) and The Marshal (1995).

THE SETTING
Gray, Indiana 1880s.

DEDICATION BY JIM LEONARD, JR.
Plays come from mysterious places – at least for me. Here’s how this one came to be: First, I learned that my dear friend John Geter, for whom I’d written the role of Buddy in a play of mine called The Diviners, had a disease called AIDS. Like me, John grew up in a small town in Indiana. Some in his childhood community did not react well to the news of John’s illness. The dying they could deal with. The truly frightening part was John being gay. Gay equaled damnation: therefore AIDS, therefore death. The irony is that John left acting to become a minister and baptized my sons. But that’s how folks thought in the early 90’s.
At the same time this illness was happening to John, Dr. Henry I. Schvey came to New York’s Circle Repertory Theatre seeking to commission a play to celebrate the centennial of Washington University’s medical school. I needed the money. I deposited his check and proceeded to panic, having no idea what to write about. Then I had a thought: “What would happen if it was only the Christians who got AIDS?” I

PARKER PLAYHOUSE PRESENTS
May 6 - 9, 2010
love Jesus, but that’s where I started: The godly get ill, complications ensue. It’s easy to judge the righteous-it’s hard to tell a good story.
For the next two-and-a-half years, I wrote and rewrote Anatomy of Gray. Dr. Schvey bravely staged the premiere with a cast of talented students. I rewrote. Rob Bundy mounted a beautiful and simple production in Circle Rep’s Laboratory Theatre. I rewrote. I staged it in Arizona. It was staged in San Francisco. I rewrote. My friend Steven Deitz directed a stunning production at a contemporary Theatre in Seattle. The audience seemed happy, but I knew something was profoundly wrong with the story, and I didn’t know how to fix it. So I put it away. For ten years. Now. Time passes, but time heals nothing – it just lets us grow numb to loss. Years after John’s ashes were spread on the water, I was in a very dark place. I was depressed, I was angry, and I didn’t even know I was grieving. Then one night, I had a dream about John…and when I woke up, I know how to tell the story. This is the truth: Craig Slaight called from A.C.T. in San Francisco a week later; I told him about my dream; he dared me to write it; and then he staged it. This time, the play was the river and I was the raft. I combined and complicated characters, and I put a young woman at the center. Her father had died, and she wouldn’t shut up about loss and love and grief and sex and longing and landscape and weather. I didn’t find the story, the story found me.
— by Jim Leonard, Jr.
 

CAST

PARKER PLAYHOUSE PRESENTS
May 6 - 9, 2010
 

TICKETS
Tickets will be available at the door. Advance tickets may be reserved by calling Andrew Holmes at 608-743-5727, or by email: aholmes@janesville.k12.wi.us.
Thursday, May 6 – 7:30 p.m.
Friday, May 7 – 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, May 8 – 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, May 9 – 2:30 p.m.
Adults: $8.00
Students: $6.00
Seniors: $6.00