A PORTABLE PLAY Comes To Yale Art Gallery 4/24, 4/25

"Diary of an Infidel," a short, one-act play adapted from a story by surgeon-writer Richard Selzer, will be performed at the McNeill Lecture Hall of the Yale Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel Street, on April 24, 8 p.m. and April 25, 2 p.m.

Professional actors, led by film, stage and TV actor Bruce Altman, will join doctors and academics from the Yale community to give a reading of the play, which is based on the lead story in Selzer's book, Taking the World in for Repairs.

Sponsored by the Yale Elizabethan Club, the play is free and open to the public.
The story concerns a visit by Dr. Selzer to a Benedictine monastery on the island of San Giorgio across the bay from Venice. The character of Selzer is split into two separate roles: one is the offstage narrator who delivers voice-over stage directions and self-reflective commentary as a complement to the action on stage. The on-stage "Selzer," played by Altman in this production, is the protagonist of the drama, the author/surgeon who comes to the island to write without distraction and becomes preoccupied with the rigid asceticism of the Benedictine order. The dialogue between Selzer, the surgeon, and the monks who are his hosts is a dialectic of science and faith, flesh and spirit, with Selzer the narrator, mediating.

The actors will be in simple costumes but will read their lines from the script. The New Haven production will be directed by film and stage director/producer Margarett Perry. Physicians Thomas Duffy and Frank Bia will play the Benedictine monks.

Scriptwriter and producer Edwin Lynch cut the script from the whole cloth of the story, not adding a word or deviating in any way from Selzer's richly nuanced prose. A veteran producer of PBS programs and documentaries, Lynch sees "Infidel" as a new kind of theatrical experience, which he describes as "literature on its feet." With a pick-up cast that stays on book and negligible production costs, the play can travel anywhere, providing performers and audience alike with a seamless immediacy that eludes most Contemporary Stage productions.

Often referred to as the "Dean of Medical Writers," Dr. Selzer took up the pen while still holding the scalpel, a feat, which, if still rare, was unheard of at the time. His critically acclaimed fiction and essays draw on his experiences as a doctor and his writing has inspired generations of medical students. He is the author of more than a dozen books, among them: Rituals of Surgery (1973), Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery (1976) Letters to a Young Doctor (1982) and Raising the Dead: A Doctor's Encounter with His Own Mortality. (1993) He has earned a National Magazine Award, an American Medical Writers Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He retired from his surgical practice and clinical professorship at the Yale School of Medicine in 1985 to devote himself to writing full time.

Edwin Lynch earned an MFA in film from New York University. He worked as a cinema vérité cameraman on Woodstock and Hearts and Minds, and as Director of Photography on Marjoe, a trifecta of Academy Award films. Subsequently he joined with Robert Geller on the acclaimed American Short Story series for Public Television, serving as Producer and Director of Photography. His new play, Revolt of the Castrati was read last year at the Judson Memorial Church in New York City, where he is Guest Artist.

Bruce Altman is an accomplished film and television star whose first job after graduating from Yale School of Drama was a lead role in the movie Regarding Henry. He has had notable parts in such films as Glengarry GLen Ross, To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday, and Matchstick MeN. Altman has appeared as a lawyer in The Sopranos and Recount-the HBO dramatization of the 2000 Presidential election-and many episodes of LA Law.

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