26 April
This month we read a play written by David Lindsay-Abaire, Rabbit Hole, that deals with the way family members survive a major loss. Becca and Howie’s four-year-old son Danny is killed in a car accident when he runs out into the street after his dog. Becca’s brother also died a year before of a drug overdose, and her mother, Nat, is still struggling to deal with that. Becca’s sister, Izzy, is pregnant out of wedlock but excited about becoming a mother. Jason, the teenage driver of the car that killed Danny, is struggling with his own guilt and wants to dedicate a book he has written to Danny and seeks forgiveness from Becca.
Rabbit Hole is a gripping story involving family members dealing with deep loss in their individual ways – and in ways that we all can recognize in ourselves and in our own families. The play was adapted to make a successful movie starring Nicole Kidman in 2010.
As we read through the play together, each of us could recognize the struggle of Becca and Howie to make sense of their loss. They joined a support group of grieving parents, dealt with the well-wishers who thought it was enough to point out that “it must have been God’s will”, and struggled with the stress it created in their marriage. The authenticity of the dialogues had each of near tears at times as we read our parts.
It’s not a topic that one thinks much about – until tragedy strikes us personally. We saw once more how theater drama can offer us a safer place to explore how we might deal with it, and in the process share some of our insights with each other.
Please join us for our next play reading if you can.
Hi All,
I really loved this play. So full of emotions and truth. BUT I think it would be an extremely difficult play to put on stage. You would need some brilliant actors and a clever director.
The pacing would be essential , fast dialoques and the important silences, playing with the humour that is also there.
I could see this would make a better film. The close ups of the actors faces, their emotions, body language, shots of nervous hands etc.
The basic idea that we all grieve in different ways and that when we are grieving ourselves , it is so difficult to unterstand that others are grieving just as much as we are , but in different ways.
Good choice.
Thank you, Jenni, for your thoughtful comments. It’s a challenging play, as you wrote, about a very difficult topic that we mostly would like to avoid even thinking about. But then, that’s what theater is about, isn’t it? We’ll see what develops.