Jefferson doctors, dementia patients, and caregivers explore memory and connection on stage

JOSE F. MORENO / Staff Photographer Even after months of interviews, editing sessions, and rehearsals, the amateur performers who tell their stories in Tangles in Time find themselves fighting tears as they practice. It’s hard for everybody on stage — medical students, doctors, nurses, and caregivers — when Nora Dougherty has to watch her husband, bigger than life in video shot last Thanksgiving. Bill, who has Alzheimer’s disease, was still able to talk a little then, and his face glowed with delight as he played in a percussion group. The Philadelphia couple, both 76, joined this theatrical production together, but his disease progressed so quickly that he had to move to a memory care unit before audiences could see him in person. She now comes to rehearsals alone. “I’m very sad,” she said. “When I see the face he had there … a lot of the life has gone out.” Then there’s Mike Szkaradnik, 62, and his wife, Mary Anne, 64, who has frontotemporal dementia. They can both still be on stage, but the Voorhees woman can’t speak and he knows it hurts her to watch film showing her own erratic behavior. A retired critical-care nurse, she knows her brain is broken. He wonders whether he’s doing the right thing by subjecting her to this, but he wants to share their devotion and do this thing together. “I love you and I want people to know I love you,” he tells her. The multimedia production, a collaboration between Jefferson and Theater of Witness , will be presented Sept. 13 and 14 at Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral in University City. It is a collection of personal stories that explore memory, culture, and truth pieced together with film and music. Anecdotal by nature, it has the feel of a sophisticated story slam. […]

Click here to view full article