EPAC on the Edge Announces THE WHALE

The Whale, written by playwright Samuel D. Hunter, and directed by Lydia Brubaker. EPAC Artistic Director Edward R Fernandez, will be featured in the role of Charlie. Supporting roles are played by Holly Andrew, Gabrielle Dina, Alexander P Bannon, and Cynthia Charles.

Loss. Belonging. Addiction. Mortality. Religion.

The Whale tells the tale of the sad last days of Charlie, a middle aged man whose life has slowly become merely an existence within the confines of his single bedroom apartment in Idaho. Morbidly obese and in failing health, Charlie has cut himself off from most of the world outside of his door. We see Charlie, a looming mass of human flesh, surrounded by his trails of empty fast food containers, eating his way towards an early death. His daily routine consists of occupying the cement block, reinforced sofa of his living room, and speaking into a headset to his online students, a job that allows him to reach out to others, while keeping his grotesque physique out of sight from his audience of pupils.

Charlies' last remaining human contact is that from his friend, Liz, a nurse who has vowed to help Charlie, but only finds herself enabling him to further his descent into morbid obesity by sustaining him with buckets of fried chicken and meatball sandwiches. The physical and metaphoric walls that Charlie has built around himself, slowly begin to crumble, first with the unexpected visit from a hope-filled visiting Mormon Missionary, and later by his estranged and angst ridden teenaged daughter. We see the unfolding story as a sad end to a life once hopeful, and to the deteriorating expectations that once seemed achievable by each character. How different each are, yet how similar their struggles seem once they are diagnosed individually is eerily haunting. All have suffered loss. All strive for belonging to the world around them. All deal with addiction, n, or the codependence of another's. All enveloped in their own mortality, and that of the central character.

The Whale plays August 11, 2017, at 8 PM. Tickets are $15, general admission and can be purchased at ephrataperformingartscenter.com or by calling the box office at 717-733-7966.

EPAC on the Edge is a new cooperative of staged readings co-produced with Creative Works of Lancaster, and Theater of the Seventh Sister. The Series consists of a trio of readings, presented each in a single-night performance held on the stage at Ephrata Performing Arts Center. The Whale is the second show of the series.

This series is supported in part by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.

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