Empty Fullness: Meditations on Death & Life
Written and performed by Adam Versényi
February 20 & 21 at 7:30 pm
At Swain Hall Black Box Theatre
April 2024. Adam Versényi and his sister, Andrea, take their 94-year-old mother, Dinny, to Switzerland for a medically assisted death. As he reflects on his memories of his mother, on their journey to Switzerland, and on his relationship with loss, this piece also acts as Versényi's exploration of life and death. Unable to exist without each other, life gives death "a full emptiness and an empty fullness."
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"Both life and death are a process," Versényi says. "The Process Series is the perfect place to work through thinking about my mother's death and how we view death in the U.S. I hope that the show will both help and comfort all those coming to terms with the deaths in their lives now and in the future."
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According to Process Series Founding Artistic Director Joseph Megel, who directs this show,
"About a year ago, Adam told me this story over a beer. It was so powerful, I immediately said that he needed to make this experience into a one-person show. And that's what he did. I feel privileged to be a part of the journey of bringing a work devoted to such an important topic one that will touch all of us— to life.”
Adam Versényi
Adam Versényi is Professor of Dramaturgy in Dramatic Art and Dramaturg for PlayMakers Repertory Company. He chaired the department from 2014-2022. A theatre scholar, dramaturg, critic, translator, and director, he received his B.A. in the combined major in Literature in English and Spanish from Yale College, and his M.F.A. and D.F.A. in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism from the Yale School of Drama.
