NHTP's Elephant-in-the-Room Series Continues With FINAL THOUGHTS Reading

New Hampshire Theatre Project's Elephant-in-the-Room Series final presentation for this season will focus on the topic of Suicide & Self-Harm, featuring a reading of the play Final Thoughts by Tim Barretto. New Hampshire Theatre Project is partnering with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention on this program, and any donations at the door will benefit the Foundation.

Following the playreading of Final Thoughts, playwright Tim Barretto and facilitator Eric Schildge will host a discussion with the audience and a panel of community members, including Shamera Simpson, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention Area Director for New Hampshire, Maine and Rhode Island, and Dr. Joshua Gear, M.D., a private practitioner in Portsmouth NH who specializes in Child & Adolescent Psychiatry as well as General and Addiction Psychiatry. Dr. Gear and Ms. Simpson will be joined by Duncan Hollomon, a psychotherapist in Cambridge MA who is also an attorney and a professional actor. Dr. Hollomon is currently an adjunct professor at Antioch, New England, and a research associate with the Program on Religion and conflict Transformation in the Boston University School of Theology.

Admission to the reading and discussion is free, but donations will be accepted to benefit the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

This Elephant-in-the-Room program on Suicide & Self-Harm will also be presented at 7 pm on Tuesday, May 21 at Christchurch in Exeter, NH.

Now in its second year, NHTP's Elephant-in-the-Room Series presents playreadings and community conversations about subjects that we as a society often have difficulty discussing. Additional topics for 2019 have included Eating Disorders & Body Image, School Safety in the 21st Century, and the Opioid Crisis & Families (touring this spring to Concord, Rochester, Brentwood and Gorham NH). Discussion questions focus on attitudes about ethical issues involved in the subject over time and today, and our responsibility as a society to bring these issues out of the shadows and into the cultural mainstream. Audience members who wish to help bring these social issues out into the open are provided with an Action Plan for positive action steps and ways to get involved.

The 2019 Elephant-in-the-Room Series is possible through generous funding by New Hampshire Humanities, NH State Council on the Arts, and Exeter Hospital with additional funding from the NH Charitable Foundation, Portsmouth Lodge of Elks #97, and The Edgewood Centre. For more information, please visit www.nhtheatreproject.org.

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