Voices Festival Productions to Present Roundtable Event For WHO CARES: THE CAREGIVER INTERVIEW PROJECT

Voices Festival Productions will present a Community Care Roundtable, November 19 at 7:30 pm, as part of National Alzheimer's Awareness Month. The roundtable will be co-moderated by MacArthur "Genius" Award recipient, elder-justice advocate, and author, Marie Therese Connolly, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author and recent caregiver, David Shipler. This free, community event will feature an array of elder care experts in conversation with DC theatermakers currently working on issues related to caretaking in anticipation of VFP's January 9 - February 2 run of its world-premiere production, Who Cares: ♥ The Caregiver Interview Project, co-written by Ari Roth, A. Lorraine Robinson, and Vanessa Gilbert, and directed by Kathryn Chase Bryer. All VFP events-including the Community Care Roundtable-will take place at Universalist National Memorial Church.

With the prevalence of caregiving seemingly everywhere, including more and more on current DMV stages, VFP's Community Care Roundtable will examine how the tools of art-making can offer new paradigms in addressing issues of social invisibility, neglect, bureaucratic dehumanization, and familial strife often experienced during the throes of caregiving. The roundtable will be co-moderated by Marie Therese Connolly, author of "The Measure of Our Age: Navigating Care, Safety, Money, and Meaning Later in Life," and David Shipler, recent caregiver and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in the Promised Land." The elder care expert roundtable participants include Nephelie Andonyadis, theatremaker and gerontologist; Steve Gurney, founder, director, and publisher of Positive Aging Community; Julie B. Kennedy, CEO and co-founder of Rubywell.com; LaTimberly (Timmy) Johnson, UX Research & Product Lead at Rubywell.com. DC theatermakers participating in the roundtable include Alex Levy, Artistic Director of 1st Stage; Lisa Hodsoll, performer from the 1st Stage production of The Waverly Gallery; Sam Simon, creator and performer of Dementia Man being presented at the Phillips Collection in November; Derek Goldman, director and deviser of the Mosaic Theater production of The Art of Care; Raghad Makhlouf, performer in The Art of Care; Cody Whitfield of Theatre Washington's "Taking Care" fund; Susan M. Simon. The robust roundtable of elder care experts, organizers, and theatremakers will also be in dialogue with the VFP Who Cares co-writing team.

The Community Care Roundtable will be followed by the world-premiere production of Who Cares: ♥ The Caregiver Interview Project, running January 9 - February 2, 2025, and preceded by free workshop readings of the play on November 17 and 18 as part of Alzheimer's Awareness Month. Who Cares is based on over 20 interviews with local colleagues, elder justice advocates, and close friends whose lives have been disrupted - but also transformed - by unexpected caretaking for loved ones contending with memory loss. Often funny, always intimate, and powerfully informed, Who Cares: ♥ The Caregiver Interview Project moves from church basement support group, to comedy club, to rockstar book event, revealing fault-lines within families, and bonds challenged and strengthened, forming newly generative communities of care.

Says VFP Artistic Producing Partner, A. Lorraine Robinson: "Caregiving is one of the most overwhelming, profound, cataclysmic, life-changing experiences I have ever had. When I think of unquestionably dramatic, transformative experiences, I can't think of anything that tops it in scale, content, or quality. Understanding that people all around are simply grappling with this in silence, alone, and most certainly without the needed resources to deal with it was a shocking awakening. No matter what fortunate resources or personal metal you possess, this is not a situation that can be managed alone, or even within a familial group. This is a societal issue, a public policy issue, and it's chaotic and catastrophic, and we are all suffering. We will all need help. We will all need care."

VFP Founding Artistic Producing Partner, Ari Roth notes: "It's remarkable that so many people are experiencing this sandwich-generation burden of parenting while caregiving for parents, and just as remarkable that there are so many plays in our area documenting that crisis, in all its permutations. These works should be in dialogue with each other! Who Cares is about love, loss, guilt and liberation, communitarianism and individualism. The Waverly Gallery, produced by 1st Stage, shows a family fracturing as a matriarch deteriorates, and how family members help each other through. It will be interesting to hear how all of this care-related work impacts audiences and artists alike, living through these ordeals and what experts in the field have to say about the power of narrative to address, what one character in Who Cares calls, 'the slow emergency' of our care crisis."

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