On December 22, 2020, at the height of the pandemic, when there was a shortage of PPE (personal protective equipment), family members were not allowed to visit their loved ones in hospitals, and refrigerated trucks were lining the streets of New York because there was no more room for the bodies, Marion’s husband was told to go for bloodwork. That began their thirty-two-day journey through hell. Marion has written a book of narrative poetry, that reads like a play, about the experience of sudden illness, navigation through a medical system that was overwhelmed and broken, the loss of her husband, grief, and the beginning of a new life. Ultimately it is a story of survival and resilience.
Marion Gittleman is a poet, playwright, novelist as well as a stage and voice actor. She has been invited to read this work at the SWF Foundation in Clinton, and twice at CT Hospice in Branford. She’s appeared with Kim Hunter, William Roerick, Anne Meachem, and David J. Stewart in the original production of Come Slowly, Eden, by Norman Rosten; Hurd Hatfield in John Brown’s Body and a myriad of productions in New York and the Bay Area. She won a Best Actor Award in a Bay Area production, and was a Boli Award nominee for voice work in New York. She has most recently appeared in play readings with the Moses Gunn Play Company in Guilford, and Fairfield Theatre Company in Fairfield.
“…grief is the dark/longing for the light…”  says Marion Gittleman in 32 Days, her hero’s journey into the underworld, which recounts the loss of her beloved husband during the pandemic, and leads, eventually, to a sobering independence. Scene after scene, Gittleman doesn’t flinch from the hard truths, but meets them head on with a quiet authority, abiding strength, and undiminished love.
-Thomas Centolella, American Poet
This program is free and open to all. Refreshments will be served.
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