The popularity of hospital dramas on television attests to society’s fascination with death, illness and the struggles of modern medicine. These are subjects that fascinate and terrify us, and have been studied in the media and literature since the first writers put pen to paper. “Wit,” opening at the Jewel Box Theatre Feb. 2, explores the subject in a different way — through the eyes of a literary professor with terminal cancer as she assesses her life with profundity and, as the title suggests, wit.
Dr. Vivian Bearing is a professor of John Donne’s metaphysical poetry and words become her greatest comfort as she endures experimental chemotherapy to battle advanced uterine cancer. Many of Donne’s poems explored the transition between life and death and his words take on new meaning to Bearing as she relates the poems to her own impending death, and raises provocative questions about the unknown transition we all eventually face.
Bearing is played by Laurel Watt, the Jewel Box Theatre’s new artistic director and veteran actor whose theatrical roots stretch to her childhood in California. Watt majored in Drama at California State University and has appeared on the Northwest stages of Seattle Repertory Theatre, A Contemporary Theatre, Empty Space and numerous others. She has ample opportunity to ply her experience in “Wit” as her character is always onstage both reacting to and narrating the events of her life.
Taking the director’s chair for “Wit” is Larry Blain — a familiar face to Jewel Box theater-goers who has appeared in numerous plays including “The Laramie Project” and “God’s Man in Texas.” This is his first time wearing the director’s hat, but it is a comfortable fit.
“This show has been a collaborative effort. It really is teamwork,” said Blain. “I have an appreciation for language well used. The language is amazing. It’s so real.”
Playwright Margaret Edson won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for the production.
“It’s a play about love and knowledge. And it’s about a person who has built up a lot of skills during her life who finds herself in a new situation where those skills and those great capacities don’t serve her very well. So she has to disarm, and then she has to become a student. She has to become someone who learns new things,” said Edson in a 1999 interview.
The supporting cast includes the head doctor, played by David Speck, determined to get results, a younger doctor and former student of Vivian Bearing, played by Craig Jacobrown. Vicky Lynn Dorsey, plays the nurse, the only person who seems to care for Vivian as a person rather than a patient, and a collection of medical staff portrayed by D.J. Sarah Stewart, Leslie Rothbaum, Susan Anemone and Marilyn Love.
“Wit” at the Jewel Box Theatre
Feb. 2-March 3; 8 p.m. Fridays & Saturdays,
2 p.m. matinee Saturday Feb. 25
Tickets: $14 general admission, $12 seniors/students/active military
Tickets available in Poulsbo at Liberty Bay Books and the Jensen Way branch of Frontier Bank, in Silverdale at the Kitsap Mall information booth or by phone at (360) 779-9688.
