Praying Small
PRAYING SMALL
So my dear friend Clifford Morts is a gifted playwright and actor working in Chicago. I had the opportunity to share the stage with him years ago and learned a great deal from watching his work.
He's penned a play called Praying Small which ran in Chicago to great acclaim and now it's being presented in New York City at The Sonnet Theatre in The Producers Club.
It's a pretty powerful piece. If you're in town please try to catch it. Here's the info.
PRAYING SMALL
By Clifford Morts
Directed by Becky Burkhard
Opening Night
Friday, November 13th 8pm
The Sonnet Theatre in The Producers Club
358 West 44th Street, NYC (corner of 44th and 9th)
212-769-7973 Reservations
"Praying Small is a masterpiece..."
ChicagoCritics Online
"...full of truth and honesty..."
The Chicago Tribune
"CRITICS CHOICE"
The Chicago Reader
"An astonishing piece of writing...brutal in its honesty..."
Theatreworld Magazine
Some info about the piece:
Sam Dean is a hyper-literate, highly successful, white-collar, New
York yuppie that’s got the world on a string and sits on a rainbow.
His six-figure job keeps his lifestyle well-heeled. His best friend,
Roman, carouses the bars and clubs of New York with him nightly.
Eventually, he meets his beautiful wife-to-be, Susan, and embarks
York yuppie that’s got the world on a string and sits on a rainbow.
His six-figure job keeps his lifestyle well-heeled. His best friend,
Roman, carouses the bars and clubs of New York with him nightly.
Eventually, he meets his beautiful wife-to-be, Susan, and embarks
on a magical and profound love affair. Life is good.
From these promising beginnings, Praying Small unveils, in non-linear fashion, a life brought low by the “phenomenon of craving.” A life seemingly well-examined unravels through the unchecked appetites of a man afflicted with the disease of addiction. Job, home, loved ones, friends, wife and self-respect all predictably and senselessly destroyed. Sam Dean, a man of no small intellect, falls victim to the tragicomedy of substance abuse and then digs deep inside himself and, through the help of his altruistic AA sponsor, Greg, takes his first tentative and fragile steps back into the land of the living. A land of choices.
Along the way we see his dysfunctional childhood with his worshipping mother and his emotionally and physically abusive father, his shallow and co-dependently nihilistic relationship with Roman (who, unlike Sam, never escapes the clutches of alcoholism), his passionate and doomed fairy-tale romance with the love of his life, the humiliating loss of his downtown, “trophy” job, his final “bottom” as he finds himself in jail and at the mercy of “New York’s Finest”, his anguished first year of sobriety where life-threatening pitfalls lie everywhere, and finally, his acceptance and surrender to a God of his understanding as he realizes, mercifully, he is not alone.
Praying Small is the story of one man wracked with the disease of addiction – one good man with the desire to change. The bottom line is this: recovery is for people who want it, not necessarily for people who need it. This is a play about a man who wants it. This is a play about the splendor of redemption and the catharsis of forgiveness.
This is a play about the power of change.
Comments
Andrew
YES !!!
Andrew