Citizen Review: Well

posted by Jacqueline E. Lawton

In the play Well, currently in production at Arena Stage, playwright Lisa Kron examines the nature of sickness and wellness in the body, one’s family and community, and interestingly, the process of writing a play. With bravery and humor, Kron shares semi-autobiographical familial and childhood experiences that are at times breathtaking, candid, surprising, funny, and for the most part, universally, true.

Interwoven in this story is Kron’s mother’s quest for social justice and racial equality in Lansing, Michigan during the 1960s and 70s. Historically, we know that while some communities successfully adapted to racial integration as a result of the Civil Rights Movement, many communities did not. In Well, we are shown a community in the overall successful struggle and acceptance of racial integration. Lisa, who is white and Jewish, grew up as a minority in a mostly Black and Christian community. She shares with us her experience through stories that reveal moments of acceptance, bitterness, joy, confusion, excitement, fear, and loneliness.

With great wit, unexpected tricks, and masterful storytelling construction, Kron shares with us what happens in the process of writing a play:

-Your characters turn against you and you start to lose your play.
-As a result, you begin to doubt your own abilities to write a play.
-You remember that you do know what you’re doing, it's just that the theatrical conventions are sometime restrictive and prevent you from telling a story as big, personal, and important as the one you’ve set out to tell.

For me, as an audience member and a playwright, this is the most rewarding part of the whole experience. I was engaged throughout and couldn’t wait to see what happened next.

In closing, I feel that Lisa Kron play beautifully and courageously portrays life and theater for what it is, when lived well and to its fullest: a seductive, entertaining, maddening, scary, humbling, irreverent, and provocative force of nature.