Painful Lessons About Cancer in Play by a Victim
There was no stage, and the performers played their parts in the harsh glow of fluorescent ceiling lights. Some in the audience had beepers on their belts, others wore white coats and all looked weary after a long day of work at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center here.
By most standards, this was not an ideal setting for theater. But for the cast of "Purple Breasts," it was the realization of a dream they shared with Daryl Lindstrom, who directed and co-wrote the play about her struggle with breast cancer. Ms. Lindstrom died last year at the age of 37.
Ms. Lindstrom wanted her play, named for the purple markings that identify the area on the breast for radiation, to be a teaching tool for making doctors, nurses and medical staff members more sensitive to their patients. Many of the 15 scenes recount the harrowing treatment and bullying attitude endured by a character named Zoe, who, in trying to cope with the disease, turned in despair from the medical establishment to an array of alternative, and often far-fetched, treatments. A Medical Audience
After more than a year of performances around the Bay Area, a staged reading at the Actors Institute in New York and a trip to the Edinburgh Arts Festival in Scotland, "Purple Breasts" finally reached a medical audience, and they reacted with rapt attention, gasps of recognition and quiet weeping.
In addition to their professional contact with cancer patients, many in the audience of 130 also had firsthand experience with the disease.
Joyce Reynolds, the manager of organizational development at the hospital, suggested staging the play there after seeing it at a local theater with her children's nanny, GiGi Edwards, whose cancer was being treated with chemotherapy. Dr. Christopher Chow, the chief physician, was told more than a dozen years ago that he was unlikely to survive lung cancer, and he said the hardest part of his illness, like Zoe's, was the loss of control.
Dr. Chow said he was particularly disturbed by a scene in which Zoe is rushed through a lung biopsy, with little regard for her fear or her pain. "That is not uncommon," Dr. Chow said. "And it contributes massively to the loss of identity and the already hopeless feeling."
Also in the audience was Dr. Bruce Baker, the chief of radiology, who recently learned that his mother had breast cancer. After the curtain calls, Dr. Baker, with an edge of desperation in his voice, insisted that the cast give him more precise information about the course of Ms. Lindstrom's disease. 'You're Playing Who You Are'
In response, Gloria Symon, a co-writer of the play and one of the actresses, told him that in 1985 Ms. Lindstrom, a drama teacher at San Jose City College, had a lumpectomy and radiation and was told that her prognosis was good. Three years later, the cancer had spread to a lung and the pelvis.
Dr. Baker blinked once and stared at the woman before him, whose eyes were glazed with tears.
"You knew her?" he asked.
"I'm her best friend," Ms. Symon replied.
"Then you're playing who you are," Dr. Baker said, almost inaudibly.
Two others in the cast, Allaire Paterson, who plays Zoe, and Susan McMahon, who plays Zoe's sister, Susan, knew Ms. Lindstrom well and wrote the original version of the play with her. Through the spring of 1989, Ms. Lindstrom directed "Purple Breasts," which at that time did not deal explicitly with dying.
Within a few months, Ms. Lindstrom was often too ill to come to the theater, and production meetings were held at her bedside. The play, always intended as a work in progress, was rewritten to account for the grim turn of her illness.
Ms. Lindstrom saw two performances that fall, and died shortly afterward. Her friends cared for her in the final stages of her illness, with Ms. Symon moving in so Ms. Lindstrom could die at home.
It was an untidy passage to death, Ms. Lindstrom's friends said, angry and chaotic, like the play. "This was not like Elisabeth Kubler-Ross," Ms. Paterson said, referring to the author who charted the stages of dying, from disbelief to acceptance. "Daryl wasn't a textbook case. There was not a lot of resolution." Spunky and Sentimental
The play is by turns spunky and sentimental.
Zoe tells a story about her prosthesis falling out at the beach, within view of a handsome man who is obviously interested in her. She picks it up and tosses it out to sea, complaining loudly about "those **** jellyfish." Then she turns to the audience. "Try explaining that to Blue Cross," Zoe says, with a smile.
Later, her husband, David, moves out, worn down by the fact that nothing he does seems to please her. "I never intended to leave for good," David says. "I just couldn't breathe anymore." He gulps, averts his eyes and admits that now he can sleep through the night and enjoy waxing his car.
In the final scene, when Zoe is dead, David recalls meeting her at a cast party, after she starred in a play. When they danced, he said, he noticed the stage glitter on her eyelashes, "bright and sparkling, like Zoe."
The members of the cast who knew Ms. Lindstrom say some performances lift their spirits and others amplify their grief. "None of this is going to bring Daryl back to us," Ms. Symon said. "But it's the best we can do. And if she knew -- if she knows -- I think it would make her happy."
Photos: A scene from "Purple Breasts," a play at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Santa Clara, Calif., about metastatic breast cancer. The authors wanted the play to be used to sensitize doctors and nurses.; Employees watching a performance of "Purple Breasts." (Photographs by Terrence McCarthy for The New York Times)
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/12/11/us...-a-victim.html
I was touched by this article from both perspectives ...
:w: