Two Rooms

By Lee Blessing

The Blue Room Theatre is proud to announce the second installment of the Fall 2002 season: Lee Blessing’s intense political drama, Two Rooms, opening August 15th. Blessing, author of A Walk in the Woods and Eleemosynary, penned Two Rooms in 1988. Fourteen years later it continues to inspire both controversy and conversation; the themes and feelings it portrays remain horribly raw in post-September 11th America.

Can theatre help to bring a nation closer together? Can an examination of the bitter wounds caused by a world gone mad bring us closer to a better understanding of ourselves? What can we learn from four people in two rooms?

The two rooms the title refers to are the Beirut cell where an American is held hostage by Arab terrorists, and his study at home, which his wife has stripped of its furniture in a desperate attempt to maintain an emotional connection to her husband while seeking solace from the political turmoil and media frenzy encircling their personal trauma. On stage, one room serves as both, and is also the setting for imagined conversations between the hostage, played by Joe Hilsee, and his wife, played by Elizabeth Kollings. The room provides an arena for the all-too-real discussions she has with an ambitious journalist, played by Matthew Brown, and a government representative from the State Department, played by Betty Burns.

Blessing’s great strength as a playwright is revealed in this combination of simplicity of setting and depth of feeling, as his characters struggle to pursue justice and maintain their sanity under the unblinking eye of the modern-day media machine. The horror of captivity, the power of love and the political nature of tragedy surfacing in America’s social consciousness and Blessing asks, can our wounds ever heal? Does the power lie within each of us?

Two Rooms will be performed at the Blue Room Theatre Aug. 15-31, every Thursday through Saturday. For more information or to reserve tickets, explore our website or call the box office at 895-3749.