Lauren Wengerd, a senior from Dundee, Ohio, plays photojournalist Sarah Goodwin in Time Stands Still, opening Feb. 14. (Photo by Dylan Bomgardner)

Play explores relationships, social issues, through lens of photojournalist injured in Iraq war

A photojournalist returning from war-torn Iraq deals with the images her mind cannot erase and the personal, marital and moral choices that define her life in the Eastern Mennonite University theater production, Time Stands Still, directed by senior Amanda Chandler.

Written by Pulitzer Prize winner Donald Marguiles, Time Stands Still will be staged in the Lee E. Eshleman Studio Theater at 7:30 p.m., Feb. 14-15, and 21-22.

The play follows its main character, Sarah Goodwin, as she returns to Brooklyn, New York, after being badly injured by a roadside bomb. The drama explores the relationship between Sarah and her boyfriend James Dodd – also a journalist – and the moral ambiguity of earning one’s living from documenting the suffering of others.

“The war and the politics informs their situation, as it does for our post-9/11 society, but the heart of the story lies in how they learn to cope together and how they relate to each other,” says Chandler.

In the New York Times on Aug. 23, 2013, theater critic Sylviane Gold gave an outstanding review to a Hartford, Ct., production of this play, calling it Marguiles’ “finest work to date.”

“Like [his] earlier plays, it asks us to ponder the intricacies of love and friendship and the emotional perils of professional success…. ” wrote Gold. “[It] goes beyond the personal to explore the moral ambiguities of journalism, a subject that both producers and consumers of the news media tend to avoid.”

Performances run approximately two hours with an intermission.

General admission tickets are $5, or $2 for EMU Students, and are available through the EMU theater department. For more information and answers about age appropriateness, contact the theater department at 540-432-4674; theater@emu.edu.

Cast:

Nicolas Custalow, a senior from Charlottesville, Va.

Chris Parks, a junior from Philadelphia, Pa.

Lauren Wengerd, a senior from Dundee, Ohio

Rebekah York, a sophomore from Bucharest, Romania