First Presbyterian Theater have spent their 2023-24 season celebrating love of all kinds and varieties. 

Kicking things off with Bedroom Farce, the theater company took us into the lives of couples both well established and new. Head Over Heels gave us a comedic look at all manner of love. Almost, Maine showed us vignettes of the journey that the heart takes through paths both comedic and tragic. And with The Prom, First Presbyterian, with the help of Fort Wayne Youtheatre, gave us a story of acceptance, encouraging us to look at how others love and treating everyone with respect. 

In their final show of the season, First Presbyterian Theater take us away from the romantic and turn toward the unconditional love found in our families with the Fort Wayne premiere of Florian Zeller’s The Father. 

The show opens Friday, May 10, and will have five showings through Sunday, May 19.

Accepting loss

The Father has a much different tone than the shows that have come before it this season. 

“We thought it was a powerful way, actually, a powerful message to end the season on,” said First Presbyterian Theatre Creative Director Todd Sandman Cruz. “We started with Bedroom Farce, and then in Almost, Maine, you also had all these very tender, some funny, but also hard-hitting real moments. And Head Over Heels, in those shows, there’s humor in all of them, but the subject matter got a little heavier and heavier and heavier. And all with very powerful messages about love and relationships, but also love and acceptance.”

In this case the acceptance is of loss, of many types. 

The story is told from the perspective of Andre, a man suffering from dementia. 

“I think the beauty of this play is it puts the audience in the perspective of Andre who has Alzheimer’s, and we never see that done,” Director Todd Espeland said. 

Espeland’s wife, Cara Lee Wade, a photography professor at the University of Saint Francis, has worked extensively on the subject of memory and Alzheimer’s. 

“Her work is about how objects contain memory and the impermanence of memory and how we impart memory into objects and we impart memory into photographs,” Espeland said. “And those things sometimes carry the memory for us. So her work really informed our decisions about what we were going to do in terms of filling Andre’s world with objects and taking those objects away.”

Set plays role

Portraying Alzheimer’s is a difficult task, and the creative team is tackling this in a couple of unique ways. 

One of these is by making the protagonist more relatable. 

“We’re not trying to pretend that Alzheimer’s is something that afflicts only the very, very old and infirm who can’t get around. The effects of Alzheimer’s start happening far earlier than when we get to the place where we are infirm and old,” Espeland said.

To this end, the far-from-infirm Brad Davis was cast as Andre, who is listed as 80 years old in the script. 

“I think that decision actually goes a long way to helping the play to strike a chord of empathy with the audience, because we’re not looking at somebody who is ‘old and infirm,’ but somebody who could be us, and I think that’s what gives this production a lot of power,” Espeland said.

The set of the production is also playing a large part in depicting the struggles that go on in Andre’s mind. 

“It’s very conceptual,” Sandman Cruz said. “What we’re doing, it’s not like a regular box set of a flat or apartment. It’s more of a kind of an open space lab. It begins with lighting and projections of memories and things. Furniture comes and kind of floats on and off as do thoughts, just like our thoughts and memories on a daily basis come in and out. So that’s kind of the sense that we are coming across on stage.”

“Behind our traditional living and dining room, our set designer Rachel Surface has designed two sculptures that are filled with elements from people’s lives,” Espeland said. “So, windows, furniture, knick-knacks, from around a house, all kinds of things that are back there that are then painted white, and we’re projecting up onto those surfaces. As the play goes on, all of the items on stage get completely taken away and removed by various characters so that Andre is left with nothing at the end of the play, in much the same way that Alzheimer’s takes his brain. He has memories that are continually removed and removed and taken away.”

Hardships of caretakers

Despite the heartache, there is love to be found in this show, just as there has been in the rest of the Season of Love at First Presbyterian Theater. 

That is the love caretakers of those with Alzheimer’s have for their loved ones. 

Sandman Cruz said the cast really resonated with that. 

“There are numerous cast and crew members who have family members who are dealing with dementia and Alzheimer’s currently,” he said. “My stepfather died of Alzheimer’s. Todd’s wife, Cara, both of her grandmothers died within, I think, six months of each other of Alzheimer’s. So it’s a show that hits all of us.” 

Espeland finds the emotions of the caretakers is truly the heart of the production. 

“What I love about the play is that it doesn’t turn Alzheimer’s into a Hallmark special where we go, ‘Oh, the person who has Alzheimer’s, we feel so bad for them.’ And the person who’s taking care of them, ‘Oh, how courageous of them.’ 

“This play really takes great pains to show that there are moments of exhaustion and there are moments where caregivers get fed up and maybe become sharp with the people that they’re taking care of,” he said. “It really doesn’t shy away from the full range of emotion and the full range of what you may experience.”