Review: WHO CARES: THE CAREGIVER INTERVIEW PROJECT at Voices Festival Productions

Health care systems and society in general has never adjusted to just how long people are living these days. It’s fallen largely to family members to do their best to help their elders stay at home as long as possible. The strained efforts have had a huge effect on all these volunteer caregivers, trying to help loved ones, in addition to life’s usual work and family obligations.

It can be an isolating process, which is why support groups are so necessary if only as a sounding board where individual struggles can be fully heard. A casual discussion about their own efforts in this area led two D.C. theater makers, Ari Roth and A. Lorraine Robinson, to realize how universal these stories can be. They set out to interviewing 20 others and found overlapping details. 

One of the interviewees, Vanessa Gilbert, was enlisted through her Project Doula into birthing a theater piece on their findings and the complicated feelings they unleashed. Eighteen months and three 29-hour workshops later, the three authored a theater piece, brought to life by director Kathryn Chase Bryer.

The result is the singular “Who Cares: The Caregiver Interview Project” a Voices Festival Production playing at the Universalist National Memorial Church. 

Set in the church’s basement black box theatre, in the round, it almost seems like it will be a support group experience. Audience members are asked to raise their hands if they’re caregiving, before the cast of six begins to introduce themselves and their stories in a circle. There’s a table for coffee and cookies nearby (that audiences are invited to partake), just as there is in actual church basement support groups.

But theater’s magic swiftly takes over and with the rearrangement of chairs or a costume accessory, stories become re-enactments; connections shift. There's digital reaching out  through Covid’s Zoom period, a book talk gathering, a stop at a comedy club and lots of guilt-filled confessions about trying one’s best in impossible, emotionally-ravaging situations where the approaching finality is always death, one way or another. 

Because the stories are drawn directly from personal experiences, with very specific details, they seem to hit harder. There's a woman named Lori who is a great convener but holds tight to details on her sister’s debilitating condition. A health care provider full of energy and caring who burns out before you know it. A man dealing with his wife’s early onset dementia. Most of the actors play a couple of roles that they help define with a piece of clothing or a different approach.

Underlying these compelling, intertwining individual stories are the facts of our crisis, delineated in M.T. Connolly’s book “The Measure of Our Age: Navigating Care, Safety, Money and Meaning Later in Life” and brought to life on stage by Lise Bruneau. “We all want to get old, but not be old,” she says. While the life expectancy has grown to 78 years, healthy life expectancy is just 66 and lower still for the poor, poorly educated and people of color. 

It’s a lot to take in, and the personal stories often carry an emotional wallop. It’s hard to imagine any audience member not struck by a similar story in one’s own life. It’s a good example of how theater can help frame issues with often more power than a straight discussion. 

The commitment of the artists involved are fully on display throughout. Laura Shipley Chico, a London based actor -- who happened to be in DC to take care of her own mother -- handles a couple of roles effectively. Kendall Erin Claxton is versatile on stage — her caretaker character Kris moving from eldercare to baggage handling is one of the show’s darker ironies. 

Todd Scofield has command as a husband facing his wife’s decline, and a comic who deals with his mother’s lapses through standup (though piping in the laughs of bits taken from comedian Jim Meyer undercuts the material). Joelle Denise is a steady presence throughout in embodying co-writer Robinson’s story. 

But special praise is due to Llogan Paige who delivered all the needed strength as an understudy not quite off book, who on opening night had to step into the roles listed for Kelly Renee Armstrong (who, after the events in the play, you just had to think was detained by some complicated home care glitch herself). 

“Who Cares” has a future as a theater project that can touch a whole lot more people, but may need some editing along the way so not to scare people off with the running time — at two and a half hours with an intermission. 

Photo credit: “Who Cares: The Caregiver Interview Peoject” Photo by Peggy Ryan. 

“Who Cares: The Caregiver Interview Project” continues through Feb. 2 at the Universalist national Memorial Church, 1810 16th St NW. Tickets online. 

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