hello

I am Andrew Martineau, and I thought I would talk a little bit about my play Etched in Stone. I directed the play before it was published by Independent Play(w)rights, and I got a very different perspective of it after staging it myself. I had seen in performed in New York and other places, but seeing it through the director's lens adds another, perhaps more practical, layer of understanding. The first time it was performed, I acted it in, which allowed me to experience the play as a living, breathing character within its imaginery world. Another interesting aspect of this play's history is that one actress has played the older and younger versions of the same character, Fanny and Frances, and she played them twenty years apart in the first and most recent productions.

The play is set in a cemetery and involves the ritual of visiting a loved one's grave. Rituals offer compelling dramatic action. I think of a cemetery as a space that involves rituals not always clearly defined by society because they are less public in nature. A cemetery, or more euphemistically, a “memorial park,” is a place that evokes dread and comfort, fear and tranquility. The ritual of placing flowers at a gravesite is simultaneously symbolic and therapeutic. It is abstract in that the offering of flowers represents devotion, yet it is concrete in its ability to allow the mourner to accept and live with grief. For many still living, cemeteries are necessary spaces.