You Will Get Sick

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It starts with your balance, but it begins to spread, as these things often do. Your legs numb, your grip-strength weakens, your arms go rigid and hard. Before long, you’re hiring a stranger to say aloud what you can't say yourself: that you got sick. A recipient of the Kennedy Center’s Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting Award, YOU WILL GET SICK is a new play in second-person about learning how to live within your body as you find your way home.

We are excited to close Available Light's season with one of the most moving scripts we've encountered in years. At AVLT we've often talked about plays which we find particularly moving as "changing the way we breathe." When I first read "You Will Get Sick" I found myself repeatedly forgetting to breathe, it is so surreal and funny and devastating. Many of us have had the painful honor of seeing or nursing our loved ones to the ends of the their lives or relying on the care of others when as we encounter our own ill-health. Part of the beauty of "You Will Get Sick" is that in a way it holds us through the unknown fear of end of life and how we deal with the parts of ourselves that scare us, the parts that we don't want to talk about, and the parts that are the hardest to face.

Thank you for supporting Available Light Theatre and your local theatre community. A friend recently told me she sees AVLT as "an essential component of Columbus's mental and emotional well-being." While I find myself humbled to claim that identity for AVLT, with the production I feel we are truly embracing that mantle.

May we all be well, may we all be free from suffering, may we all find ease and peace, may we all be surrounded by care in the many ways it can manifest for us.
- Eleni Papaleonardos, Director; Aaron Mendoza, Assistant Director