HURLEYVILLE — Standing People Together directs John Mighton’s play, Half Life, at Hurleyville Performing Arts Centre on Friday, December 8th at 6PM and again on Sunday, December 10th at 2:30 PM. Half Life takes place in a nursing home and revolves around two elderly residents, Clara and Patrick, who meet and fall in love, rekindling what may have been a wartime romance that neither can quite remember. It’s a story that explores memory and memory loss, the toll that lost memory takes on families and communities, and what shines through when memory fades.

Caroline Baillie and Eric Feinblatt are co-directors of both the show and Standing People Together. SPT use arts, education and nature-based programming to connect people to people and people to nature through local activities ranging from theatre workshops and performances to forest schools and nature retreats.

Caroline Baillie is an educator, theatre director and author. Baillie launched her UK based company Critical Stage in London 1998 and directed shows in England, Australia and Canada before arriving in Hankins, NY in 2017. Her shows have always focused on raising awareness of social issues including homelessness, domestic abuse, mental health, teenage pregnancy and at-risk youth.

Eric Feinblatt is an educator, photographer and film maker with a background in Theatre for Development and Augusto Boal’s, Theatre of the Oppressed. Caroline and Eric met at the launch of his show about HIV Aids in Lesotho Africa, ….and the rest, as they say, is history.

This is their first time co-directing, and they’ve assembled a cast of local actors with eclectic biographies: Cass Collins (Clara) is a Yarnslinger, and was just elected to the Tusten Town Counsel; Bill Williams (Patrick) has a monthly radio program, “The Kingfisher Project”, on WJFF radio; James Sullivan (Donald) recently starred in A Wonder Wheel Production, “Where the Devil Roams”; Thomas Cambridge (The Reverend) stars in the award winning film, “An Angry Boy”; Jim Stratton’s (Scientist) avant-garde film, “Homage to Anonymous Blocks”, was shown at this year’s Callicoon Art Walk; Lexee McEntee (Tammy) is a core cast member of Farm Arts Collective and was featured along with Thomas Cambridge in the short film, “Enigmatic” at the 2023 Big Eddy Film Festival; Elizabeth Hope Williams (Anna) is a producer for PBS’s Frontline with a ton of theatre and film work on her resume; and Cynthia Crisp (Agnes) is a massage therapist with years of TV appearances in her background.

Visit https://hurleyvilleartscentre.org/half-life/ for more information and tickets.