Walk Two Moons at the Bowie CPA, Jan 12

National Players present:
Walk Two Moons
By Tom Arvetis, based on the novel by Sharon Creech
Directed by Jenna Duncan

Sunday, January 12 at 4:00pm

Location: Bowie Center for the Performing Arts.

Tickets: $5 students, $10 adults. Click here.

Based on Sharon Creech’s Newbery Medal-winning novel, this play tells the story of 13 year old Sal, who is driving cross country with her grandparents in search of her mother – and along the way meets many eccentric characters. None more so than Phoebe – Sal’s best friend and the main character in the stories she tells to entertain her grandparents. Phoebe’s story bursts with wild conspiracy theories of her own missing mother, which helps Sal confront her own loss. But with a deadline looming, Sal might not make it in time to reunite with the one person she wants to find most. Told primarily through memory, National Players weaves together a story that is both heartrending and heartwarming.

NOTE FROM THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
So much of art and media when I was growing up taught me that grief was an event you experienced all at once and at some point reached the other side. Both I and Sal, our protagonist in Walk Two Moons, have experienced that there is nothing about grief that concludes at any point. More often, grief is your once-tiny life being broken open by the unknown and often unexpected, then spending the rest of that life growing, shifting, laughing at, building on, learning from, hating, appreciating, loving, and wrestling with that intrusion. What Walk Two Moons shows us so beautifully is that everyone experiences their own form of this; their own life expanding before they are ready. It reminds us that if we’re going to have our grief be a part of us forever, we ought to take a page from Sal’s book and walk more often in the shoes of others. Why spend our whole lives siloed in our own battles when we could open ourselves to an empathy that may allow us to understand one another better and help us discover we may not be as alone as we thought? Jenna Duncan, Director, Walk Two Moons.

I love road trips. I love knowing that there’s a destination so far away that you have to measure the trip in days and not just hours. I love watching this incredible country reveal itself to you as you round corners, crest hilltops, and emerge through tunnels. I love being in a car with people and growing closer to them by sharing stories, playing silly games, singing along to songs, or simply sitting quietly and listening to the road. Road trips change people, as Sal and her grandparents certainly experience during the course of Walk Two Moons, Tom Arvetis’ beautiful adaptation of the Sharon Creech novel. Through the course of Sal’s road trip she shares fantastical stories about her friends, learns profound lessons, and works through her own sense of loss and anger since her mother left on her own cross-country trip and didn’t return. We are delighted to share this story with you, and we hope you enjoy this journey. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me at jkj@nationalplayers.org. Jason King Jones, Artistic Director, National Players