Tackling end of life issues in Reader's theater with ordinary voices.

It's the work of a Murray, Kentucky poet and writer.

That's inspiring conversations about the inevitable that's now on connections.

♪ ♪ >> Thank you for joining us for connections today.

I'm Renee Shaw.

The approaching holidays can be especially tough for those struggling to care for ill loved ones or >> experiencing loss and grief.

It's a topic we resist discussing, but we really shouldn't avoid playwright, poet and civic journalist Constance Alexander for Murray, Kentucky has braved the complicated and profound when it comes to aging and end of life issues the way home a spoken-word opera artfully weaves the story of 2 women dealing with cancer diagnoses and the reporter who captures they're real life experiences.

Last week I spoke with Constance about the piece designed as readers terror that has been performed in and out of Kentucky.

Constance Alexander, thank you for a few minutes of your time.

You're welcome.

There are so many things I could talk to you about because you are such an accomplished playwright poet, journalist, community activists year so engaged and the literary community.

>> But I want us to spend time talking about the way home, a spoken word opera.

That is beautiful and profound and heartbreaking.

At the same time and and tell us what inspired this spoken word opera and what do you mean by the way, home?

>> What inspired me to write this was that I was working on a grand project from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

I was in partnership with our public radio station WK and that sets him.

And our top pick was end of life issues.

2 women, local women or region or women.

>> Volunteer to be interview.

Both of them were fighting cancer.

And they agreed to be interviewed throughout their process of dealing with cancer.

The 2 of them never met.

One of them did not have any health insurance because she had been a cancer survivor when she was 37.

Flight that as I wrote about it, this other woman who was an older person.

Read the articles and heard some of the radio pieces and asked if she could contribute some money to help this woman.

Her name in that.

But I is to reset to help to restart pay for some of her hospital cost.

So the 2 of them never met.

But they Larry, their interview them.

And after those interviews were over and after the project was over, I still have their voices in my heart to an head.

I just so I should write something.

And then I got the idea if I could write something that could also raise money.

>> 4.

>> Cars is associated with the uninsured or cancer breast cancer, women's health.

That kind of saying rather than get royalties for this piece.

I just wanted to see it performed.

Anywhere.

Any place to raise money for these issues so that that was the original idea, the title, the way home.

Originally the tire was otherwise.

And that was based on a Jane Kenyon.

How am called otherwise.

Jane King, with your noted, call it who died of leukemia when she was in her late 40's.

That had been the name of the peace.

And then as I was writing it in writing the end.

It just came a pardon me the lowering the way home came the Permian the end of the play and I call it why it is.

It is a player Reader's theater or spoken for.

But I remember when it can't that line and it just came to me.

I just broke Yeah.

>> Well, and I will say this perfect.

It was just right.

Well, it really is because I'm I'm fond of saying that we all are just walking each other home.

Yeah, and when you get a little older that really makes a lot of sense to you when you lose people in your life and you experience these type of health ailments and and and the women.

So there's 3 main characters.

There's a reporter and she's also a Middle age woman.

And she's working on a documentary about death and dying to reset who you mentioned.

She was first diagnosed when she was 30's and in her 30's and then, you know, in her later years at 50's she was diagnosed again with cancer.

And then Pat, who is this window that you alluded to in her 60's has Parkinson's and then has advanced stage cancer.

And the stories you tell because it's not just about the human connection that Pat and Theresa and this reporter make.

And you're a reporter, a journalist.

I want to ask you about the impact of your lived experience to in the lands from which you bring this work forward.

But it is also talking about the access to insurance and not having the money and and the co pays and having to pay out of pocket.

But also the humanity of people who stepped in the gap to h***.

Yeah, it's beautiful.

Yeah, Constance.

It's really beautiful.

Art of story for Theresa.

>> Is that they put her on another chemo drug.

>> She went to a local pharmacy to inquire about the cost and everything.

And then they called her later and said we'll pay for it.

She lived in Trigg County and Katies Kentucky.

Just the humanity that you can't find in a small tear in and there are lines in the play about that.

That new.

Where she loves that people.

Well.

All right, says what I like best is when you think positively there are people along the way to help you find your to the confusion.

Just like my friends and inform us it's yeah.

Is all of the true story and also her dream and have an angel.

I used to ask her about dream.

She was for an artist and have very vivid, colorful dreams.

And she had a dream where an artist a shoulder bag where an angel tapped her on the shoulder and have her follow her.

And it was a lovely dream.

So it's all reality.

Pat, the older character who had Parkinson's was not diagnosed until she had stage 4 breast cancer because her doctor was assuming that her problems were associated with the Parkinson's right?

So and she had trouble.

Communicating with your doctor.

And apparently her doctor didn't read the articles that I read because after the first one appeared he asked her at the end of her appointment if she had any and I want to just had asked her whole list that she had a list.

She was a researcher.

That's right.

You want to get to that point because I think the other big thing that I took away was advocacy self advocacy and Pat.

>> And Teresa had this exchange, you know about or not them having exchange.

But the reporter about I wanted to know more, but it was like my physician didn't want to tell me.

And when you look, I think it's page 18 you know, she wanted to know what was going having to read a lot of books and learn to speak your language, talking about the physician.

I got a book on anatomy and physiology and started looking in the gloss.

Redefine words in my Leger report not spend time online.

Looking for information.

I don't know if everybody feels this way, but I'm a lot of women on the Internet like me now.

I don't like to get up in people's faces and say things they don't want to hear.

I just want you to realize that I want to know what's going on.

What's going on.

I have a right to know down to I and how many times have we encounter people on our own personal lives that have said the same things to us about what they want to hear from their physician.

Exactly.

>> And when this piece is performed and that has been performed all over the country by actors of all ages and all skill levels.

But when when they get to this little soliloquy, it does start out mildly, which Pat was a very gentle spoken word and but by the end, she's pretty irate.

And every actress dies my it that way.

And it always gets a laugh.

One of the things about a piece like this is that we don't always talk about these issues.

I have a pro fare relief that the arts are way to surface issues that we need to talk about.

And we need to exchange are we stand in our insight center frustrations with a lot of these topics and certainly end of life issues is is warrant and it's one that touches all of us.

Absolutely.

>> And the fear of talking about it is if we're going to advance our mortality, right, that we may perhaps thanks that if we don't talk about it, then it won't happen.

But none of us gets out of here alive, right?

And so there.

And so I think that that city in what is so beautiful when I use that before, is the fact that you really confront that in a realistic, genuine way that it's based off these people's real life experience.

This is not your imagination at play here.

These are these are real conversations.

And pat, the older woman that you mentioned, she does pass on it just really makes you think about our health care system about our connections to each other, about those who fill in the gap and then for journalists who take the time like the kid, the reporter in this piece and as you Constance Alexander to say, we've got to all learn to walk each other home.

I do want to pivot I know this is very personal for you because I hope you don't mind me sign that you have just lost your husband and you've dealt with this end of life issue in a very real and recent way.

What would you say when you go back and you read the spoken word opera, does it strike you different and what do you want to leave people with about compassionate care and about our obligation as caregivers to take care of those in their final days.

both Pat and to re serve were hospice patients.

I wrote a lot about hospice when I was working on that documentary Project.

My husband was in hospice.

And that is a message that people should.

Now that hospice is available.

And the compassionate care that they provide where families and the patient him or herself is in valuable.

We were last year because my husband was we moved from M bigger Hass to a much smaller place.

And the hospice house is right around the corner from where we live.

The comfort that ice SOT in hospice and the good care that we needed for my husband at the end of its life was right there.

We have in-home help from hospice before my husband got too sick for me to take care of him at home.

I'm glad that I KET a fair amount about hospice before I was personally involved as the wife of someone who was dying.

But I I can't say enough good things about hospice.

I have not met anyone who's dealt with hospice, who has said anything other than the most glorious praise for everybody.

In the building, including the woman who cleans the hospice.

They are all your support and it's jus amazing and uplifting 10.

How are you doing?

Great.

Doing okay.

Keeping busy and the support that I get from friends and family is invaluable.

Although my family is not here.

They're all over the place all over the country.

And I have 2 stepsons, but bear in California and Colorado and they from afar are very supportive.

And my friends here are amazing, too.

And you've got to have friends are.

For sure.

So.

That that has been very important today.

You know, during this time when we talked, we were just flipping the calendar from November, which is National Caregivers Month.

And we recognize the work of hospice workers.

>> To December when it can be a really tough time for people who are in grief and loss and mourning.

And sometimes we look to people like you Constance.

>> Who are?

>> Luminaries and thought and intellectuals.

And we think that that spans all spaces you know, emotional and spiritual.

And I just wonder if if you can say something to someone who is in a season like you're in right now.

To kind of help them what's what to feel, how to feel and how to go about living.

>> I guess you just have to feel, however, you do feel and near every emotion I wrote to all of them several times a day.

But in this season, I think one of the great things about the Christmas season is that it's the season of light.

And my husband was in our next.

So he could decorated hero is created these amazing Christmas trees, including one made out of pork chops, which is a longer story, not Taha, but it.

I always could decorating it.

Create these amazing things.

And I decided instead thinking that I'm terrible at that kind of thing that I've been putting lights up putting decorations out for me, there's comfort in that.

Because it reminds me of the past, but it also is a reminder of this is my press it down.

And my future is being.

As a widow, which is such a strange word.

But there are a lot of us are good teams.

So I think you have to it's a cliche, but you do have to feel your feelings.

Not isolate too much.

And accept the help that people are so willing to give been so generous in their spirit.

I think that's really important.

>> So how does one get a copy of the way home a spoken-word offer and how?

How can this be performed?

Where can this be performed and how are you encouraging groups to take this on to help people understand these very, very tough issues.

>> The book is available.

Roof finishing line Press, which is to Kentucky Press, which is great for all of my things that have been published have been published by contacting publishers.

So it's finishing were impressed or they could contact, meaning you can find me if you Google me, you're hurting I have copies as well.

The book came out right at the beginning of COVID.

So I haven't really done any promotions.

But groups around the country performed it for years.

And this piece was written about 20 years ago, just getting it published was a struggle because it doesn't fit into any particular category.

So if I had published as a spoken word after which was strange enough that finishing worrying, pick it up.

So anyone who is interested in performing it.

Can access copies and there's information in the book itself about how to do that.

It is a reader's theater east, which means that the actors don't have to memorize lines, although usually people do in that member icing there once.

But you can read it and perform it.

And in some of the performances in one in the performance in Louisiana, one of the women in the way it was an 86 woman who was under treatment for cancer.

She was.

She didn't have a lot of stamina, but she was determined to be in this So, you know, that's one example in Arkansas, there was a warden who played the reporter who was actually a reporter for the local FOX chair and she was fighting breast cancer.

She was a young woman and she has since died.

So there are all kinds of different people who have taken rules, but because its readers theater and you don't have to have a set, you don't have to prop sir costumes.

Some groups just do it as you're reading.

But most if you have a person who can direct.

Amazing things have been done with this piece depending on where it's being presented.

It's been presented on big main arts centers.

It's been performed in a hospital meeting were.

College campuses.

It's been performed in community theaters.

So it it is a very flexible peace.

And the reason I wrote it that way so that groups can use it and then have a discussion about some of these issues.

Chris, there are many, many of them even now with the death of my husband.

I'm realizing there are some details that that I didn't take care of.

Changing beneficiaries is something I really because he and I we were always each other's beneficiary so.

There are details that people need to know about and they don't really like to talk about them as it says in the play most of the time, people say if I die instead of women, I die.

And that's that's the interesting thing to me.

Because it is an inevitable thing.

It is a part of life in and as difficult as it is, it brings in sorry.

And waste in and he learned patients and compassion that you didn't think you were at least in my case patients and compassion that I didn't know.

I was capable of you.

>> How how did writing it changyou an impact, too and maybe even prepare you for the recent days.

>> I don't think you're ever prepared.

I mean, I KET we KET that my husband was dying.

He had dementia as well.

But he died of lung cancer.

He never smell.

But even knowing that his term was limited.

I KET you really never are prepared.

There's a line in some movie with Shirley MacLaine.

If think the name of the movie when her daughter guys, her daughter is a diabetic and she restart Vatican.

She ends up dying as a young woman leaving some small children.

And when she dies, the characters says something like I thought this was going to help, but it's not helping or I thought it would feel better.

>> That hurricane is over.

But you do feel that >> It does take turn.

That's what everybody tells.

>> And it's true.

But life takes turn.

And to to lapse into another crush a living one day at a time.

Certainly is a way to negotiate your way to the way home.

>> Your next work, which I know there's got to be one.

>> What will it be working for?

I'm working on a and it's called.

There's something I need to tell so I'm hoping that through the winter, I'm going to be concentrating on finishing this.

Final draft.

I hope it's a perennial draft of that and then submitting it to publishers.

>> So can you give us the overarching thing?

>> I think the overarching theme is that there this that title, there's something I need to tell you.

I think there are a lot of things that we need to tell each other that we don't.

>> We need to >> be reminded of those things that it's important to talk to each other and share the into the sea of our thoughts with the people who are around us and the people we care about and the people who care about us.

Yeah.

>> Well, Constance, you know what a fan.

I am of yours and I have been for so many years ever since Al Smith, the late Alex Smith introduced Os when you are on comment.

That's been a while.

>> I wouldn't say how >> But I've always thought so highly of you and how do in such high regard and appreciate all the work you've done throughout the years and certainly the way home.

I caps lights, the spirit of the magnificent woman.

But I know you to be.

Thank you so much.

>> Thank you.

I appreciate it.

♪ >> Another nod to art imitating a life.

Well lived square.

Peg studio and design is created more than 100 murals around Kentucky.

>> A mural of the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is one of 12 and what's called the Inspiration Series that went up in one central Kentucky City this fall.

It was painted on the side of a building in downtown Winchester and the owner of one business housed in that building says she could not be happier that she sharing space with the notorious late RBG.

>> Getting the drive by and see people just stopping in their tracks and staring at it is it's amazing.

>> We originally started the project about 2 years ago and that we're trying to do the hype of she passed away and at the time it just wasn't much of it pretty where we were actually approached by square peg.

>> Asking if we would be interested.

They had been looking for somewhere to paint this and had not been able to secure location.

And I talked to our landlord about point painting a mural.

It just worked out perfect that they needed a place to put her.

And we wanted to hear.

>> We wanted something that was coming.

Something the property owner also into the business owner.

we sat down with her for a while and kind of show what it might possibly the Clyde or even considered a couple of people that this seems like the most perfect fit, either support.

>> Just meant so much to me.

She really was just a people, a person of the people.

She really fought to make a quality across the board for everyone.

And I think that, you know, being able to honor her.

And it's a reminder, you know, that.

>> Everybody deserves the same treatment.

And you know, that's that's how we treat everybody that walks and thus far.

I've been asked if it's my grandmother I've been asked, you know, if she's a resident of Clark County, a lot to learn and thought it was like a family member sign passing it.

>> And that the news actually they cite as it came in full detail and we started the brighter around the neck and the Krb so that they KET her attachment to the Roe versus Wade and, you know, the Supreme Court returning that.

I expected there to be, you know, some controversy about it.

We have had no negative comments on social media.

I've had no negative comments and the bar.

But honestly, I wasn't hesitant about putting it out there.

I was hesitant about the feedback we've at tearful.

>> Responses from some people which is always.

Wonderful.

It is that.

Happy to see something adding to the community through sounds that's kind of nice to will that come?

You think?

>> That wind up with, you know, our pioneer Festival and Winchester.

So a lot of people got to see it through the foot traffic while they were painting a while it was being rendered and you know, it caused people just opened my door and said, what are they paying?

What's going on?

So we've got to share that with them.

Since the murals been up, the bar has been tagged probably 100% more by people who stop by the Sea, Ruth and maybe stop by the sea making have a beer.

>> He's almost a win-win-win.

Is we want to encourage local businesses such as support artists and the community want community support.

Obviously the arts and then also the local businesses.

We have just had so much positive feedback from.

>> Women men.

I think it's, you know, allows people to actually talking celebrate, you know, strong women that work hard in the community every day.

I think it's created a lot of love and I think it's created a lot of good feeling.

And for everybody that comes into the bar walks past.

>> Other notable Americans in this mural series include Harry Dean Stanton and Tom T Hall and John Prine, we thank you for joining us for connections today.

I'm Renee Shaw.

You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, all the places where there and watch us on Kentucky.

Addition each week night at 6.30, Eastern 5.30, central until I see you again.

Take good care.

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