{"id":370461,"date":"2025-07-17T17:38:23","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T21:38:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dctheaterarts.org\/?p=370461"},"modified":"2025-07-17T17:38:23","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T21:38:23","slug":"side-effects-may-include-at-contemporary-american-theater-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dctheaterarts.org\/2025\/07\/17\/side-effects-may-include-at-contemporary-american-theater-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Side Effects May Include…’ at Contemporary American Theater Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

For playwright Lisa Loomer, Side Effects May Include\u2026<\/em>, now playing as part of the Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF), is a deeply personal project. In 2019, just as the COVID epidemic was about to begin, Loomer\u2019s son developed a little known, but devastating, condition, akathisia. In 2021, Loomer wrote a lengthy article<\/a> about her son\u2019s experience with the condition and the infuriating struggle she had with the medical system in trying to get help for him. The play hews closely to the story she wrote.<\/p>\n

Some background<\/a>: Akathisia is clinically defined as \u201ca neuropsychiatric syndrome and movement disorder that makes it difficult to sit or remain still due to an inner restlessness\u2026 A person with akathisia experiences an intense sensation of unease or an inner restlessness. This results in a compulsion to move\u2026 In most cases, the movement is repetitive. This uncontrollable need to move can cause extreme distress.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Liza Fernandez as His Mother and Sophie Zmorrod as Actress 1 in ‘Side Effects May Include…\u2019 Photo by Seth Freeman.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cExtreme distress\u201d hardly does justice to the experience of Gabriel, the play\u2019s young man having to deal with akathisia. \u201cLiving in a scream\u201d is how one character describes it. In her article, Loomer speaks of akathisia sufferers as feeling \u201clike having your blood replaced with battery acid\u201d or \u201clike being burned alive in a locked coffin \u2026 like being violently tortured from the inside out.\u201d It often leads to suicidal ideation, with which Gabriel contends in the play.<\/p>\n

Gabriel\u2019s mother (Liza Fernandez) says, from the beginning, that the play is Gabriel\u2019s story. Much of the play, however, centers on his mother, who tells the story, often breaking the fourth wall to directly address the audience about events and what lies behind them. Except for a brief video, Gabriel (Micah Myers), who everyone talks about, does not himself appear on stage throughout most of the play.<\/p>\n

Actress 1 (Sophie Zmorrod), Actress 2 (Susan Lynskey), and Male Actor 1 (Jimmy Kieffer) portray a wide variety of people with whom Gabriel\u2019s mother interacts: her husband, a friend, and a bewildering array of doctors and other medical providers who frequently misdiagnose Gabriel, offer competing treatment ideas, and with one exception, fail to help him or make matters worse. Gabriel\u2019s mother speaks of the situation being \u201cKafkaesque,\u201d and the situation is one in which that frequently overused term fits all too well.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Susan Lynskey as Actress 2 and Liza Fernandez as His Mother in ‘Side Effects May Include…\u2019 Photo by Seth Freeman.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The actors playing multiple roles distinguish their various characters through a style of speaking, a minor costume change, or a tweak of hair design. When they are playing someone close to the mother \u2014 Kieffer as her husband, Lynskey as her best friend, Zmorrod as Gabriel\u2019s girlfriend \u2014 they create believable and often sympathetic characters. When they portray doctors and others in the medical system, they provide brief sketches of often woefully dense cogs in an impersonal machine. Director Meredith McDonough maintains the clarity of the action through all the many changes and interactions.<\/p>\n

Fernandez gives a stunning performance as the frightened, angry, loving, persistent parent who wants to fix her son, but finds only obstacles in the system. Helping her son in desperate circumstances upends her life and changes her relationships. In her determination to understand what is happening to Gabriel, she learns that akathisia can be triggered not only by antipsychotic medications but by widely prescribed medications for garden variety depression and anxiety, which Gabriel had been given.<\/p>\n

Loomer invites the audience to consider a number of important questions. What is normal, and who gets to define it? When you can\u2019t fix a problem for someone you love, how do you accompany them through what they\u2019re experiencing? When is suffering drastic enough to justify suicide? It turns out that genetic testing could identify people who are particularly susceptible to developing akathisia. Why isn\u2019t that something that the medical system and pharmaceutical industry require, as a matter of truly informed consent, before prescribing any medication whose side effects can include akathisia in such people? Fully informed consent, with respect to all side effects, is what Loomer and the play demand for all medications.<\/p>\n

Loomer and Fernandez find moments to break the tension with humor. On one occasion, roughly midway through the play, Fernandez asks the audience to get up and stretch, explaining that it\u2019s no longer possible to mount a two-act play in American theater.<\/p>\n

Chelsea Warren\u2019s set centers a screen for Mona Kasra\u2019s projections, which form an important part of the storytelling. The remainder of the set consists of functional wooden frameworks on either side of the main playing area.<\/p>\n

Gabriel insists that \u201cI am not this injury. I will not let this injury define my life.\u201d That is something with which I am sure Kevin Kling, in his current CATF play<\/a>, and the generation of great disability activists who made the Americans with Disabilities Act a reality, would readily agree. Side Effects May Include<\/em>\u2026 makes the point vividly.<\/p>\n

Running Time: 90 minutes with no intermission.<\/p>\n

Side Effects May Include…<\/strong><\/em><\/a> plays through August 3, 2025, presented by the Contemporary American Theater Festival<\/a> performing at Studio 112, 92 West Campus Drive, on the campus of Shepherd University, Shepherdstown WV, in repertory with four other CATF plays. Times, dates, and ticketing information may be found on the\u00a0CATF website<\/a>\u00a0or by calling the CATF box office at 681-240-2283.<\/p>\n

Side Effects May Include…
\n<\/strong><\/em>By Lisa Loomer
\nDirected by Meredith McDonough<\/p>\n

CAST
\nHis Mother: Liza Fernandez*
\nActress 1: Sophie Zmorrod*
\nActress 2: Susan Lynskey*
\nMale Actor 1: Jimmy Keiffer*
\nMale Actor 2: Micah Meyers*<\/p>\n

PRODUCTION TEAM
\nScenic Design: Chelsea M. Warren**
\nAssociate Scenic Design: Ruidi Yang
\nCostume Design: Kathleen Geldard**
\nLighting Design: Mary Louise Geiger**
\nSound Design: Christian Fredrickson**
\nProjections Design: Mona Kasra**
\nProduction Stage Manager: Lindsay Eberly*
\nAssistant Stage Manager: Allie Blaylock
\nCasting: Pat McCorkle LTD.
\nDramaturg: Tom Bryant
\nVocal Coach: Kiristen Trump<\/p>\n

*Actors\u2019 Equity Association<\/em>
\n**United Scenic Artists<\/em>
\n***Stage Directors and Choreographers Society<\/em><\/p>\n

SEE ALSO:<\/strong>
\nContemporary American Theater Festival announces full 2025 lineup <\/a><\/strong>(news story, March 31, 2025)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lisa Loomer has written a deeply personal play about a mother whose son, like Loomer\u2019s, developed a devastating condition. 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