Square One Theatre Opens DISTRACTED, 3/1

Square One Theatre continues its 23^rd Season with Distracted, a provocative and poignant look at a modern family. Playwright Lisa Loomer has simultaneously written a riotously funny play as well as tackling an important social issue. She's applied her gift for blending comedy with problems caused or exacerbated by the world in which we live.

Distracted opens Friday, March 1 and continues on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays through Saturday, March 16 (2013) at Square One's home base, the Stratford Theatre, located at 2422 Main Street in Stratford, Connecticut.

Playwright Lisa Loomer's hilarious, yet sobering, look at a modern family asks: 'Are we so tuned into our 24/7 sound bites world that we've tuned out what really matters?' What's really wrong with nine-year-old Jesse? He can't sit still. His teacher thinks it's Attention Deficit Disorder. Dad says, "He's just a boy!" And Mom is on a quest for answers. Is Jesse dysfunctional or just different?

Distracted is the story of Mom and Dad trying to do right by their kid. At first they resist the diagnosis of ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). Then they accept it and begin looking for help from social workers, therapists, teachers, shrinks, and general practitioners. They even consider homeopathy, chelation therapy, hyperbaric oxygen chambers and genuinely awful dietary regimens. They seek it from their friends and neighbors, all of whom are either getting divorces or doping their own children.

Distracted is a stinging indictment of our pill-for-every-ill culture, in which parents of hyperactive children find themselves being pressured -- sometimes subtly, sometimes overtly -- by doctors, teachers and school administrators to medicate their kids. In the case of Jesse, the pressure comes in the form of a threat that, unless something changes, he'll be put in a special ed class.

According to Director Tom Holehan "The subject is tremendously serious, yet the playwright has an uncanny ability to make it more palatable for audiences with her deft touches of humor and unique situations, without demeaning either the subject or the families."

The cast includes Square One favorites Lucy Babbitt (Stratford), Michelle Duncan (Roxbury), Lillian Garcia(Woodbridge), Ann Kinner (Westport), Pat Leo (Monroe) and Betty McCready (Stratford) plus newcomers Alanna Delgado (Stratford), James Leaf (New Haven) and Michael Mulligan (Stratford).

Playwright Lisa Loomer's other plays include Two Things You Don't Talk About at Dinner, Café Vida, Living Out,The Waiting Room, Expecting Isabel, Bocon!, Broken Hearts, A Crowd of Two, All By Herselves. Birds and Looking for Angels, among numerous others. She is the recipient of the Jane Chambers Award, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award, a Garland Award, a Lurie Foundation Award, and the American Theatre Critics Association Award (twice). She was twice nominated for a Pulitzer.

Working backstage are Stratford's Annette Versage (Stage Manager), Kimberly Krol (Assistant Stage Manager),Judy Keegan (Assistant to the Director) and Don Henault (Sound), Milford's Cliff Fava (Lights) and Shelton's Greg Fairbend (scenery).

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