The Body Play
Written by Madison Wetzell
Directed by Paige Conway
(A World Premiere)
March 28, 2025 - April 13, 2025
7:30pm, Thu/Fri/Sat and Mon, Apr. 7. 2:00pm, Sun, Mar. 30, Apr. 6 & Apr. 13, Gordon Square Theatre. Preview is Mar. 28. Opening Night is Mar. 29.
EVERY TICKET is "Choose What You Pay" and will be offered online, over the phone, and at the Box Office.
Amy, and Amy's body, take us through a physically comedic journey through chronic illness, unresponsive medical personnel, and an unstable healthcare system while questioning the absurdity of being embodied and what it might mean to be a body.
CONTENT DISCLOSURE: The Body Play includes discussion of eating disorders.
Click here for COVID-19 Safety Protocols. (Sunday Covid-Conscious performances)
The Gordon Square Theatre is ADA-compliant featuring a ramped entrance and an all-gender, wheelchair accessible restroom.
Ensemble Members:
Ensemble: Day Ash, Andrea de la Fuente, Kelly Dunn, Rachel Gold, Erin K. Moran
The Creative Production Team Includes:
Playwright: Madison Wetzell
Director & Line Producer: Paige Conway
Stage Manager: Kate Beckley
Scenic Design: Ezra August Bender
Lighting Design: Sierra Smith
Costume Design: Amanda Rowe-Van Allen
Sound Design: Angie Hayes
Rigging Specialist: Bill Auld
Technicians: Katie Boissenault, Jordan Ficyk, Noah Hughes, Joe Milan, Rose Musti
Photos by Steve Wagner
enhance your experience
Buy your tickets to one of the following performances for extra perks!
Post-Show Talkbacks
The Doctor—Patient Connection
Sunday, April 6
Ticket purchases for this performance include a post-show talkback featuring Dr. Anne Wise, Neighborhood Family Practice, who will be joined by Cleveland Pandemic Response Co-Organizer Angela Manella to discuss how patients and doctors can work together towards diagnosis with special emphasis on chronic illness.
About Dr. Anne Wise
Anne Wise, MD received her medical degree from Temple University School of Medicine. She completed her residency in family medicine at St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut, followed by a fellowship in Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington. Dr. Wise has practiced at Neighborhood Family Practice since 1995. Fluent in Spanish, her other interests include prison medicine, immigration policy, advocating for national health insurance and mystery novels (lots of them!).
About Angela Manella
Angela (she/her) joined Cleveland Pandemic Response (CPR) in fall 2020, and she’s been providing logistics support for CPR’s weekend deliveries since 2021. Angela finds joy and frustration at the intersections of somatics, disability justice, queerness, neurodivergence, community care, and anti-oppression practice. As an invisibly disabled, neuroqueer mother and yoga teacher, she believes that tending to our personal and collective nervous system is a foundational tool for community care and survival. She was formerly an institutional archivist and has too many philodendrons.
Arts & Health
Monday, April 7
Ticket purchases for this performance include a post-show talkback about how the combination of art and medicine promotes healing. Panelists include Linda Jackson, Director, Center for Arts in Health at MetroHealth; Dr. Nora Singer, Division Director of Rheumatology, MetroHealth; and Paige Conway, CPT Associate Producer & director of The Body Play.
About Linda Jackson
Linda Jackson serves as Director, Arts in Health, for The MetroHealth System in Cleveland, Ohio. She has led its nationally recognized Center for Arts in Health since its inception in 2014 and brings 43 years of experience as a performing artist and arts administrator to her role. Linda oversees the strategic integration of the visual, performing, and therapeutic arts in MetroHealth’s hospitals and clinics, and beyond its walls into Cleveland’s schools and neighborhoods. She is the cofounder of the SAFE (Students Are Free to Express) Project, an award-winning urban, arts-based, psychologically informed primary prevention curriculum. In 2022, in partnership with LAND studio, she curated over 1,000 works of art for the new MetroHealth Glick Center, and their Clark-Fulton Public Art Project received the NAIOP Award of Excellence for the Public Art Project of the Year by the Commercial Real Estate Development Association, Northern Ohio Chapter. Her recent collaboration with the international project, 10CHILDREN—art for change, culminated in a June 2023 festival in Cleveland bringing awareness to the impact of poverty on children’s health and health outcomes. Linda previously served as Assistant Director of Community Engagement and Education at Playhouse Square, the nation’s second largest performing arts center. As an artist she was a member of Cleveland Ballet for 17 years, dancing principal roles with company and eventually serving as a member of the artistic staff and the faculty of its school. She is a member of the National Organization for Arts in Health and currently serves as a member of their national conference planning committee.
About Paige Conway
Paige Conway (she/her) is a director, producer, AEA stage manager, occasional playwright and deviser, and intimacy choreographer from Flint, MI. Her extensive background in physical theatre and new works development brought her to Cleveland, where she currently serves as the Associate Producer of CPT. She’s grateful to be bringing this timely piece to audiences for the first time. Select directing credits: Funny, Like An Abortion by Rachel Bublitz (CPT), not-for-profit (or the equity, diversity, and inclusion play) by francisca da silveira, co-directed with Jeannine Gaskin (CPT), These Mortal Hosts by Eric Coble (Williamston Theatre), Lungs by Duncan Macmillan (Kickshaw Theatre).
About Dr. Nora Singer
Nora Singer, MD, is at rheumatologist trained to see both adults and pediatrics. She leads research in the space of inflammatory arthritis and lupus, as well as in post-Covid syndrome. She is the clinical science lead for the MetroHealth Research Institute and is a professor of medicine and pediatrics at Case Western School of Medicine.
FREE Bev Friday
Enjoy a selection of post-performance beverages on CPT and mingle with other audience members EVERY.FRIDAY.NIGHT.
The Body Play in the Media!
Cleveland.comABOUT The Playwright
MADISON WETZELL is a playwright currently pursuing her MFA at Brooklyn College, after spending years in the Bay Area. Her full-length work includes Mediocre Heterosexual Sex (Buffalo United Artists; Z-Space, Problematic Play Festival; Finalist, Bay Area Playwrights Festival; Semi-Finalist, O’Neill Theatre Center National Playwrights Conference), The Lost Ballad of Our Mechanical Ancestor (Shotgun Players Champagne Reading Series; Winner, Risk Theater Modern Tragedy Competition) and The Body Play (Finalist, Bay Area Playwrights Festival; Honorable Mention, Jane Chambers Award; LezWritesBTQ Showcase, 3Girls Theatre; New Voices Series, Town Hall Theatre). Her short play, The Official Unicorn Hunters’ Guide, was the winner of ShortLived VIII at PianoFight. She has developed new work with Shotgun Players, Z-Space, Exquisite Corpse, Faultline Theatre, 3Girls Theatre, Town Hall Theatre, PlayGround, Soundwave, The Bechdel Group, Liar Liar Theatre, and The Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep.
ABOUT The Director
PAIGE CONWAY is a director, AEA stage manager, and theatre educator from Flint, Michigan. She holds a BFA in Theatre, with a focus in Directing from Michigan State University. With over 12 years of experience as a competitive gymnast, it’s no surprise she found her niche in physical theatre and is passionate about the physical, mental, and emotional accessibility and safety it offers in a theatrical process. During the early phase of the pandemic, she began training as an intimacy choreographer through TIE (Theatrical Intimacy Education). Paige is also occasionally a playwright. In 2021 her play Tag received a virtual development process with Drafted: A New Play Workshop. She’s so glad to be with CPT and excited to be working with this wonderful community of artists. Some favorite credits include: Lungs (director, Kickshaw Theatre); Wrong River (stage manager, Flint Repertory Theatre); Dreamscape – the Collaboratory (director/devisor, Young People’s Theater); She Kills Monsters (producer/director, CHS Theatre Guild); Songs For a New World (stage manager; Flint Repertory Theatre); These Mortal Hosts (director, Williamston Theatre); Dr. Fox and the Impossible Cure for Death (stage manager, imaGEN Project – Wharton Center for Performing Arts); Milvotchkee, Visconsin (stage manager, Kickshaw Theatre); The Wolves (stage manager, Flint Repertory Theatre); The Wonderful, Wacky Witches Podcast (director/audio editor, CHS Theatre Guild).