Hospital 2011

Axis Company's episodic play Hospital, about the interior life of a person in a terminal coma, is something of a signature for the company, which has produced a new installment of the drama nearly every year since 1997. Conceived, written and directed by Randy Sharp (Edgar Oliver's East 10th Street: Self Portrait with Empty House), the show is a summer downtown phenomenon beloved for its balance of horror, humor, and weirdness. The company will present the 11th production in the series July 8 - August 20.

While most audience members return to see multiple, if not all four, parts of the summer's production, each episode is a self-contained short play that can be seen in isolation. The brief premise film that begins each year's production—depicting the event that brought on the coma—is shown at the beginning of each performance.

Each annual production of Hospital has a new protagonist, who enters a coma in a different way. This year's iteration imagines a young grade school teacher with epilepsy—played by Britt Genelin, and by Madeleine Birnbaum in childhood flashbacks—who has grown tired of taking the deadening medicine she requires to live normally. Accepting the risk of a major seizure, she stops taking the pills. On a much-anticipated date the following night, she goes up to the roof to look at the night skyline in the beginnings of a summer storm. Her companion briefly leaves her, and she has a serious epileptic event, slipping from the roof and falling to the pavement below. Once in a coma, she travels through the vast, dark interiors of her dying mind, utilizing dream-like characters from her class subjects, distant memory and imagination to guide her to the end.

Thank You to Jose Torres; Michael Birnbaum; Ros Winner Sterling, Mollie O'Mara & the students of The Epiphany School

Axis Company gratefully acknowledges the cooperation and assistance of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation

This production is made possible by a generous grant from the Peter Jay Sharp Foundation

*Actors appear courtesy of Actors' Equity Association

This is an Equity Approved Showcase