{"id":29868,"date":"2015-09-23T13:56:43","date_gmt":"2015-09-23T19:56:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=29868"},"modified":"2019-02-25T19:05:52","modified_gmt":"2019-02-26T01:05:52","slug":"baked-goods-and-bulletproof-smiles-slacs-blackberry-winter-explores-the-emotional-toll-of-caring-for-parents-with-dementia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/baked-goods-and-bulletproof-smiles-slacs-blackberry-winter-explores-the-emotional-toll-of-caring-for-parents-with-dementia\/","title":{"rendered":"Baked Goods and Bulletproof Smiles: SLAC’s Blackberry Winter explores the emotional toll of caring for parents with dementia"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"April<\/a>

April Fossen as Vivenne Avery in Salt Lake Acting Company’s Blackberry Winter, with S.A. Rogers and Kalika Rose.<\/p><\/div>\n

The premise is unalluring: a smartly dressed, middle-aged woman stands in front of the audience and recounts the struggles of caring for a parent with Alzheimer\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Yet an emotionally taut performance by April Fossen; a sharp, engaging script by Steve Yockey; and the fairy-tale interludes of Glen and Linda Brown\u2019s puppetry make for a compelling 90 minutes of theater.<\/p>\n

Salt Lake Acting Company\u2019s season opener, Blackberry Winter<\/em>, is the first staging in a rolling world premiere that will see seven productions of Yockey\u2019s new play across the country during the 2015-16 season.\u00a0 Directed here by Sandra Shotwell, it’s a work that manages to express itself beyond the “issue” upon which it is hung, as important as that may be.<\/p>\n

Vivienne Avery is an impeccably polite and minutely organized mother, wife and small-businesswoman, struggling with her mother\u2019s descent into dementia. A letter from her mother\u2019s care facility, which she presumes will announce the end of their services and the need for a nursing home, spurs a night of reflection, remonstration and tentative reconciliation.<\/p>\n

Her emotions stretched taut like the \u201cbulletproof smile\u201d she maintains even when she\u2019s dropping quarters into the swear jar, Vivienne moves about Keven Myhre\u2019s sparse set of glass and steel, and, prompted by household items displayed there\u2014 an iron, a trowel, a bottle of iodine\u2014recounts the accumulation of discovery, frustration, anger and sadness that is the fate of millions of caregivers across our country. It is an emotional confessional, an inward night of the soul where anger, grief and shame are added to her mother\u2019s famous recipe for coconut cake.<\/p>\n

Vivienne\u2019s confessional is broken up\u201490 straight minutes of this soul-bearing would be too much for character, actor or audience\u2014 with the staging, in three parts, of Vivienne\u2019s invented \u201cOrigin Myth for Alzheimer\u2019s.\u201d Shadow puppets, played by the Browns and company, project the story on screen while S.A. Rogers narrates the part of Mole and Kalika Rose that of Egret. It\u2019s not a moral fable, explaining why these things happen. Just that they do.<\/p>\n

It is Vivienne\u2019s attempt to come to terms with \u201cthe awful person thing\u201d that has her considering at one moment whether or not mom would be better off going for a walk in the woods.<\/p>\n

The mature, graying audience of opening weekend may simply be indicative of the demographics of theater audiences (which for SLAC are up\u2014a record-breaking 3,250 subscribers this year) but one can’t help but imagine that among those baby boomers a good percentage are providing care for their own ailing parents and loved ones (it’s estimated that Americans provide 17.9 billion hours of uncompensated care for people with dementia). That personal connection is unnecessary, however, to be moved by this work. Fossen\u2019s expert handling of the turbulent but restrained range of emotions, aided no doubt by a script that is dark, funny and poetic, makes it compelling theater regardless.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"2015Sep08-slac_DJD0272\"<\/a>

S.A. Rogers as Mole, and the shadow puppets of Glenn and Linda Brown<\/p><\/div>\n

Steve Yockey’s Blackberry Winter, directed by Sandra Shotwell and featuring April Fossen, is at Salt Lake Acting Company<\/a> through October 25.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The premise is unalluring: a smartly dressed, middle-aged woman stands in front of the audience and recounts the struggles of caring for a parent with Alzheimer\u2019s. Yet an emotionally taut performance by April Fossen; a sharp, engaging script by Steve Yockey; and the fairy-tale interludes of Glen and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29869,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,36],"tags":[2515,860],"class_list":["post-29868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-performing-arts","category-theatre","tag-april-fossen","tag-salt-lake-acting-company"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/2015Sep08-slac_DJD0147.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-25 12:57:15","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29868"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29882,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29868\/revisions\/29882"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}