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Wednesday, March 01, 2023
This Bay Area artist has ALS and can’t speak — but she’s still directing her dream project
Datebook: A year ago, Erin Merritt stopped being able to sing in tune during her car karaoke. Then the El Cerrito director, who has been working in Bay Area theater for decades, noticed her voice lost its resonance while she was teaching a California Shakespeare Theater class. At first she thought she had a sinus problem.
1 comment:
Emily Carleton
said...
I look forward to hearing more about this production of Tea Party now that performances have begun. Seeing how this community has rallied around beloved director Erin Merritt and this production is inspiring and heart-warming. It is moments like this that make theatre feel like a community and not just a cut-throat industry. The added touch Deb Fink has added of making a documentary alongside this production for director Erin Merritt’s twins and family is lovely. This piece brings up two separate, but important issues that are being discussed nationwide: doctors not listening to patients and slowing down. More and more we hear about how doctors not listening to or dismissing their patients is a much more systematic problem than we realized. I can’t imagine the emotional toll it took on Merritt and her family to first be told it wasn’t ALS only to find out months later that it is. The second is how the pace in the room had to slow to accommodate Merritt and did so without an issue. As discussed i n the article the communication between Merritt and the assistant director isn’t perfect, but it is enough to make it work. So often this industry prides itself on how quickly we move and forgetting that slowing down isn’t always a bad thing.
1 comment:
I look forward to hearing more about this production of Tea Party now that performances have begun. Seeing how this community has rallied around beloved director Erin Merritt and this production is inspiring and heart-warming. It is moments like this that make theatre feel like a community and not just a cut-throat industry. The added touch Deb Fink has added of making a documentary alongside this production for director Erin Merritt’s twins and family is lovely.
This piece brings up two separate, but important issues that are being discussed nationwide: doctors not listening to patients and slowing down. More and more we hear about how doctors not listening to or dismissing their patients is a much more systematic problem than we realized. I can’t imagine the emotional toll it took on Merritt and her family to first be told it wasn’t ALS only to find out months later that it is. The second is how the pace in the room had to slow to accommodate Merritt and did so without an issue. As discussed i n the article the communication between Merritt and the assistant director isn’t perfect, but it is enough to make it work. So often this industry prides itself on how quickly we move and forgetting that slowing down isn’t always a bad thing.
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