Shotwell Studios Presents

Happiness, a solo play by Heather Harpham

Upcoming performances for summer 2010

in NYC, NY and Santa Fe, NM. 

Details Coming Soon!

An exhilarating evening of highly kinetic theater, Happiness distills the emotional marathon of caring for a perilously sick child into a lyrical narrative that swerves into ethereal landscapes – mother, child, and doctors morph into Lana Turner guiding groups through purgatory, where Gandhi exalts and laments an earth that is as excruciatingly beautiful as it is inexplicably cruel. Teetering on the razor thin edge between pathos and humor, Happiness finds absurdity and redemption in the smallest details: a nurse’s soft hands; a child’s refashioning of medical tubes into puppets; a late-night ambulance ride on worn tires. Happiness considers the body as social object, medical subject, commercial commodity, and spiritual artifact. The piece explores the euphoria and fear we face as physical beings both fragile and resilient. Ultimately, Happiness leads us from the delicate, ailing baby in the incubator to a young girl merrily dancing an Irish jig.

Happiness seamlessly weaves movement and narrative into a synergistic expressive language that conveys supple layers of meaning. Harpham's performance style is visceral, somatic and imagistic. Core to the evolution of Happiness is Harpham's long-time study of Action Theater™ and her wish to create theater informed by the best of Action Theater’s improvisation elements – a sense of urgency, vitality and unexpected associations unique to each performance.