Loss is wrapped up in love in new play 'Weathering' at Penumbra Theatre

Many of us hear horrible news and get depressed. Playwright Harrison David Rivers gets inspired.

In 2018, Rivers read a New York Times magazine feature on the persistent Black infant and maternal mortality rates. Racial disparities in the health care system, lack of access and a rise in comorbidities have kept the U.S. ranking almost at the bottom of the world's wealthiest nations, the article pointed out.

After being initially knocked back by the story, Rivers called up Sarah Bellamy, president and CEO of Penumbra Center for Racial Healing. Out of that conversation came "Weathering," a play that premieres Thursday at Penumbra Theatre.

"Weathering" centers on a couple who have recently lost a child. As they mourn, the community rallies around them, helping to ease their sorrow.

"I recently read a quote that said when a parent dies, children bury them in the ground but when a child dies, the parents bury them in their hearts," Bellamy said. "The grief is overwhelming so it takes all of us to help lift them out of it."

Bellamy remembered that initial conversation with Rivers, whose "This Bitter Earth" she had previously produced and who became a Penumbra company member in 2020. The question he had up front is one that audiences are likely to ask of a male writer writing of intimate female loss in the 21st century.

"Harrison said, 'Am I the right person to write this?'" Bellamy recalled. "I said, 'You have a mom, don't you?' This is something that the whole community should be holding, and Harrison gives us a profound look into how all our relationships change with loss."

Rivers initially conceived "Weathering" as a work about a circle of women helping one another to heal.

"I was moved by the stories of the women who were profiled — their resilience and the ways in which they continued to live despite their horrifying experiences," Rivers said. "Art has an incredible power to shed light on so many things that go unacknowledged, unheard and unacted upon."

But after workshops led by director Colette Robert, the playwright added a character.

"We needed the husband, so now it's about a couple, a team, a partnership," Rivers said. "That [change] was actually at the behest of the actors who were like, 'Where's the dude — this husband who's also grieving?'"

Sometimes the partners are left out of this conversation, he added.

It got personal

"Weathering" is set in a home. But the health disparities that gave rise to the play often involve hospitals where Black women do not get treated with respect or get listened to. And it cuts across lines of class, education and wealth.

"The Times article came out around the same time that Serena Williams wrote about her health complications after giving birth" to her daughter, Olympia, Bellamy said. "It can happen to any Black woman."

Bellamy herself has a testimony. She had a miscarriage while out of town on business in Washington, D.C.

"I was alone and people at the hospital treated me suspiciously," she said. "They wouldn't give me pain medication. I ended up having to get an ultrasound and the technician asked me to insert the probe myself because it was against his religion."

"Weathering" sits at the crux of much of what is happening in the nation at a time when there's a movement for equity and when the rights of women are under attack, Bellamy continued.

Penumbra's next life

The play also jibes with Penumbra's evolution from just a theater into a center that includes racial equity and healing.

"It's a portal into Penumbra's next life," Bellamy said, adding that there will be ancillary workshops with health care professionals around the play. "These things extend and deepen the impact of Harrison's beautiful, intimate story."

For Rivers, it was something of a relief to get "Weathering" done. It was postponed twice because of issues related to the pandemic.

He points out that the play is not just for a theater audience but for society at large.

"It wants the audience to lean forward, laugh, cry and be present," he said, "but the play is also about pain."

And how that grief informs and deepens a community.

'Weathering'
By: Harrison David Rivers. Directed by Colette Robert.
Where: Penumbra Theatre, 270 N. Kent St., St. Paul.
When: 7:30 p.m. Wed.-Fri., 2 & 7:30 p.m. Sat., 4 p.m. Sun. Ends Nov. 6.
Tickets: $20-$45. 651-224-3180 or penumbratheatre.org.
Protocol: Masks required.