Remembering Sharon

Remembering Sharon is a play Nick wishes did not have to be written. It is a personal story. Sharon is-was a friend, even after all these years, it is still difficult to write. Putting Sharon in the past tense is not easy. This project, talking about this project, considering this project, wondering about it, planning it, thinking about it, outlining it, and shaping it has kept Sharon in my present for many years since her death, her murder. I don’t like that reality. I often wonder what her life might have been how we may have grown as friends. Would we have grown closer or drifted apart? Friends do that. I have stayed close with the rest of her family. Was that because of her murder? Did her death bond us more significantly? These things, all these things became the foundation for Remembering Sharon. How can empathy be shown? Can it be shown? Should it be shown? What is tasteful? Is that really my job as a playwright? In past works that dealt with unsolved crime, Sharon was my silent motivation. It didn’t quite get the word out as forcefully as I wanted my Hall-Mills play was a Hall-Mills play. I am still OK with that. I seemed to have a knack for this kind of thing. I brought up Sharon in every interview, but good writers stuck to the main subject. I had to accept the best way to bring attention to Sharon was to write about Sharon. Remember Sharon! So with this play, I am remembering Sharon. As audiences are told very quickly, Sharon was my friend who disappeared from her home two days before her sixteenth birthday in 1982. She was found murdered in a wooded area only a few yards away from her family home. Remembering Sharon is probably not just a play; it is an experience. It is a hope for an opportunity for a community to come together to talk about this loss and perhaps bring a resolution to this unsolved murder in contemporary 2012. It may also serve as a reminder to all of us that we must take care of our loved ones and talk talk! Talk about safety and common sense issues about safety and crime prevention and a better awareness of how we can keep ourselves and children safe!