Congratulations to Anne Hamilton, our Loop Archives Coodinator. Anne will be interviewed on a national radio program on the topic of USING THE ARTS TO HEAL on June 11th.
Read her article from Page and Stage called Healing with Playwrighting
By: Anne M. Hamilton, M.F.A.
This month marks the thirtieth anniversary of my best friend Curtis’ death in a car accident. The loss was one of the most significant events in my life, and I’m sure that it helped influence me to be an artist. I’ve been writing a play named ANOTHER WHITE SHIRT about four women who have lost their men accidentally or suddenly.
Some losses happen in fatal accidents and some through illness. The play started when I wrote a monologue featuring a character named Mary, a teenager who is modeled after me. Mary, too, has lost her best friend in a car accident, and in the scene she visits his gravesite and talks to him. She expresses feelings of helplessness, anger, fear of the future, and a quiet desperation now magnified by this sudden loss. When my friend Curtis died in 1979, my emotions became frozen. Although I was suffering turmoil, I also walked around in a state of numbness. After studying playwrighting and dramaturgy at Columbia University, I gained the tools to express many things – the emotions in a deeply dramatic situation, the process involved in building or tearing apart relationships, and the incremental steps to maintaining stability despite unexpected situations.
I used ANOTHER WHITE SHIRT’s writing process to pull long-buried feelings out of myself, and to move thoroughly through the particulars of my loss. By actively engaging my deepest emotions – and fears – I found that I had not lost love, but had gained it by actively continuing to find my place in the world. I encourage anyone to try her hand at writing plays. We all made up stories as kids, and most of us know how to tell a good story. Just take some time, go into a quiet room, and imagine a scene in your head. Then write it down. During the writing and production process, I’m sure the playwright gains more insight and benefit than anyone, even the director, actors or audience. The play has had two readings at Julia’s Reading Room, a program of the League of Professional Theatre Women, and it is close to completion. I have also been promised a development workshop in NYC early next year.
ANOTHER WHITE SHIRT is ultimately about healing – about moving through the process of grief until the mind, body, and mind/heart can stabilize and reach some sense of acceptance of the present and hope for the future.
To read Mary’s monologue, please visit my web column at http://opentohope.com/hope/dealing-with-grief/grief-anddepression/how-grief-movesthrough-the-body/
Anne Hamilton, principal of Hamilton Dramaturgy, has eighteen years of experience in the professional theatre in New York City, across the nation, and internationally. STAGE DIRECTIONS magazine named her a trailblazer in her field. She is an award-winning Columbia University graduate and will serve as Dramaturg for the New Voices student play festival at Muhlenberg College in October.
Please visit Anne’s website at www.hamiltonlit.com.
Email:hamiltonlit@gmail.com, Phone: 215-536-1074.
