Stephanie Weisman’s
180 Days. To Die. To Live.
In Person at The Marsh Berkeley Mainstage
Written by Stephanie Weisman
Directed by Robert Kelley
Developed with Kathryn Keats, Marc Montserrat-Drukker, & Bruce Bierman
Dramaturged by David Ford
Vocal Coaching by Candace Johnson
Performed by Stephanie Weisman, Josiah Polhemus, Anne Darragh
Click for Tickets
Online ticket sales close 2 hours before each performance,
and additional tickets may be available for purchase at the door.
“This play is full of insights for the living…. Honest and heartfelt drama leaves us feeling refreshed…. Deliciously dry wit. Comic. Heart-rending.”
–Theatrius
Extended: November 30 – December 8, 2024
Saturdays at 7:30pm
Sunday 12/1 at 5:30pm & Sunday 12/8 at 2:00pm
Post-Show Talkbacks
End of Life Choices, Steward Florsheim (11/10)
San Francisco Village Grief Counselors (11/15)
End of Life Choices. Adrian Byram (11/16)
East Bay End of Life Doula Network (11/17)
Bob Brody/End of Life Choices (11/22)
Paloma Pavel (11/23)
Director and Cast: Robert Kelley & Anne Darragh, Josiah Polhemus & Stephanie Weisman (11/24)
Reina Galanes, PhD, Board Member, End of Life Choices (12/1)
Sue Gess, PharmD, Advisory Council, End of Life Choices (12/7)
Judith Bishop, RN, Volunteer, End of Life Choices (12/8)
Please see more info below
Ticket Information
Tickets: $25 – $35 General Seating sliding scale | $50 & $100 Reserved Seating
Online ticket sales close 2 hours before each performance,
and additional tickets may be available for purchase at the door.
60 minutes | No Intermission | Ages 21+
Please do not bring infants to the show
Please read our
Health, Safety and COVID-19 Information
Our commitment to our patrons
About the Show
180 Days. To Die. To Live is the story of two peoples’ end-of-life trajectories through the lens of the narrator. Focused on their last six months, the narrator’s husband, Richard, and her friend, Shelley, were both diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Richard chose seven rounds of chemotherapy treatment. Shelley chose no treatment. Both opted to use the end-of-life assisted suicide option.
Although legalized in California in 2016, many Californians still don’t know the end-of-life option exists. Through these stories, the play also addresses what it takes to be eligible for this option and the sometimes difficult navigation through the healthcare system.
The seemingly somber, “comic” relief is provided by the narrator, the widow, a cancer survivor herself, who is busy learning qigong and other modalities to do her best to stay cancer free and healthy during and through her grief-stricken time.
Ultimately, this play is about the choices faced and possible during one’s end-of-life, traversing the personal, to the health care options and to the legalities.
180 Days. To Die. To Live is a play with music, singing and qigong. Written for four characters by Stephanie Weisman with support from Kathryn Keats, Marc Montserrat Drukker, David Ford and a wide ranging support posse.
180 Days. To Die. To Live has been funded by the Fleishhacker Foundation and Cynthia Dwork and David Fuchs.
About the Artistic Crew
Stephanie Weisman (Playwright & Stephanie) founded and has been the Artistic/Executive Director of The Marsh since its inception. Under her leadership, The Marsh has grown from a one-night-a-week performance series to producing over 600 shows annually on its San Francisco and Berkeley stages, as well as a year-round youth program, developing performance programs and classes. She is thrilled to be midwifing this new In Front of Your Eyes Festival. Stephanie has received the Meritorious Achievement Award from BATCC and was named A Local Hero by the SF Bay Guardian. Her journalism, prose and poetry have been published nationally and she was awarded a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts for her Master’s thesis, a poetry performance, Dancemasters. Her more recent performances include an opera, Aphrodisia and two solo performance musicals, Breed & Rescue and Planet DoReMi. Stephanie is a certified Radiant Lotus Women’s Qigong teacher and is currently learning Korean.
Robert Kelley (Director) is the Artistic Director Emeritus of TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, which he founded in 1970. Following the company’s 2019 Regional Theatre Tony Award, he retired in 2020 having directed over 175 productions, including many world premieres. At The Marsh, he directed “Two Minds” by Lynne Kaufman. Kelley has received the Silicon Valley Arts Council’s Legacy Laureate Award, the Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Jerry Friedman Lifetime Achievement Award, and many awards for direction from BATCC and Theatre Bay Area. He recently directed TheatreWorks’ production of Being Alive: a Sondheim Celebration.
Anne Darragh (Shelley & Pharmacist) has been performing new work for over 30 years including world premieres of plays by Neena Beber, Michelle Carter, Anthony Clarvoe, Anne Galjour, Barry Gifford, Rebecca Gilman, Miranda Rose Hall, Allan Havis, Julianne Jigour, Denis Johnson, Lynne Kaufman, Tony Kushner, Julie Marie Myatt, Peter Nachtrieb, Edna O’Brien, Bridgette Dutta Portman, Amy Sass, Bill Talen, and Brian Thorstenson among others. (AEA)
Kathryn Keats (Script Development) is an award-winning actor, performance artist, musician and teaching artist. From touring off-Broadway in a thousand shows of Let My People Come to playing Meg in Crimes of the Heart at San Jose Stage Company and her latest original work The Hummingbird, awarded best solo musical at MarshStream International Solo Fest. In 1987, Kathryn co-founded Mark Monroe Acting Studios in San Francisco and Los Angeles; supporting the professional training of over 600 actors. She continues to coach Method actors internationally for film and television. (AEA/SAG/AFTRA)
Josiah Polhemus (Richard) has acted in, written and directed many plays and films. In the Bay Area. he has acted with ACT, The Shotgun Players, Foolsfury, RE:ACT, Theatre-works, Word For Word, Shakespeare/Santa Cruz and the Yiddish Theater Ensemble. He holds an MFA in acting from ACT. His film First X has won many awards and his latest film The Falling is in post-production. He has done numerous commercials including the viral The Reason I Coach for BAND App which received over 27 million views. He has starred in the films Superpowerless, My Bad Dad and The Scottish Tale. He is a disabilities rights advocate and currently works developing these stories. Thank you Stephanie and cast and crew. (AEA/SAG/AFTRA)
Marc Montserrat-Drukker, Script Development, is an award-winning director, who directed, and co-created (with Ignacio García May) the play The Wave (La Ola) based on Ron Jones Palo Alto High School experiment in fascism. The world premiere was at the prestigious Barcelona’s Teatre Lliure and was named one of Spain’s top 10 productions of the year. Amongst many other productions, he also directed the solo performance Sombra y Cuna, starring Pedro Almodóvar film actress, Rossy de Palma, at the CDN (Spain’s National Theatre in Madrid). In México City, he directed Monty Python’s Spamalot, which became one of Mexico’s hit shows of the season. Last summer, Marc created and directed I Want To Be A Diva for the world-renowned Catalonian music festival Castell de Peralada. He also co-adapted and directed the world premiere stage version of Relato de un náufrago (The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor) by Gabriel García Márquez, which became one of the Teatre Lliure’s most successful productions of 2016. Since February 2019, he has been working as Director of Production and International Relations with Antonio Banderas production company, The Teatro del Soho CaixaBank (Málaga). www.marcmontserratdrukker.com.
David Ford, Script Development, has been collaborating on new and unusual theater for three decades and has been associated with The Marsh for most of that time. The San Francisco press has variously called him “the solo performer maven,” “the monologue maestro,” “the dean of solo performance,” and “the solo performer’s best friend.” A week rarely goes by when residents of the Bay Area cannot enjoy one of his productions. Collaborators have included Geoff Hoyle, Brian Copeland, Charlie Varon, the late Echo Brown, Marilyn Pittman, Rebecca Fisher, Wayne Harris, Jill Vice, and Marga Gomez. Ford’s work has been seen regionally at The Public Theater, Second Stage Theater, Theatre at St. Clement’s, Dixon Place, Theatre for the New City (New York), Highways Performance Space (Los Angeles), and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Co. (Washington, D.C.).
His work has also been featured in most of the fringe festivals in North America, as well as at theaters around the Bay Area including Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the Magic Theatre, and Marin Theatre Company. Ford’s directing has garnered several “Best of Fringe” Awards and a Goldie Award.
Press & Media
LIVE! In the Bay Interview
AUDIENCE REVIEWS
180 Days Audience Reviews Video
PRESS
“Hits every check mark” “Funny and touching” “One senses a catharsis in 180 Days. To Die. To Live.”
-48 Hills
Talkback Guest Organizations
Sat 11/16 – End of Life Choices: Adrian Byram
Adrian Byram has been thinking about and researching end-of-life decision-making for the last decade. After retiring from a 40 year career as an entrepreneur and senior executive in the IT industry in 2012, he began a PhD program in neuroethics – a new field combining neuroscience and medical ethics … LEARN MORE
Sun 11/17 – East Bay End of Life Doula Network
https://endoflifedoulas.care/
An end of life doula provides continuity of care and the consistent support that is invaluable to the terminally ill and their care partners; providing teady guidance, comfort and advocacy throughout the end of life process
Fri 11/22 – End of Life Choices, Robert Brody
Robert V. Brody, MD is a primary care, hospice and palliative care, and pain management physician and Clinical Professor of Medicine and Family & Community Medicine at UCSF. He has practiced at San Francisco General Hospital for 40 years; he was an original member and then chair of the hospital Ethics Committee for 17 years. LEARN MORE
Sat 11/23 – Dr. M. Paloma Pavel
Facing Death and Finding Hope and More Life
Following this daring, evocative and transformative theater piece about death, what inspirations, challenges and cultural lessons can we honor and discover through experiencing this intimate individual story?
Dr. Paloma Pavel is a psychologist, educator, and author. She is the Founder of Earth House Center, and co-founder/director with Carl C. Anthony of Breakthrough Communities. She also served as Director of Strategic Communications for the Sustainable Metropolitan Communities Initiative at the Ford Foundation. Her academic background includes graduate study at the London School of Economics and Harvard University. Her book, Breakthrough Communities: Sustainability and Justice in the Next American Metropolis (MIT Press, 2009) is nationally recognized. She is the co-author of Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty with a foreword by Desmond Tutu. She is a frequent lecturer and keynote presenter nationally and internationally on the theory of living systems and urban sustainability.
Join director Robert Kelley with 180 Days cast Anne Darragh, Josiah Polhemus & Stephanie Weisman (bios above) to discuss the 180 Days production, performances and impact.
Read about Sue here.
Sun 12/8 – Judith Bishop, RN, Volunteer, End of Life Choices
Accolades
Winner of The Marsh’s In Front of Your Eyes Festival Awards “Best Ensemble Drama” and
“Best Attended Ensemble Performance”
