Leave of Absence
A comedy for serious people

Written and directed by JAMES KELLER

 With Martha Luehrmann, Sarah Meyeroff, Harold Pierce, and Ket Watters

At the Berkeley City Club
2315 Durant (1.5 blocks west of Telegraph)

January 28 — February 1, 2009

 

For Further information, call: 925-473-1363

Or email us at: info@poorplayers.org

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Martha Luehrmann (Harriet), Sarah Meyeroff (Kate), Ket Watters (Hank), Harold Pierce (Tom)

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Harold Pierce (Tom), Martha Luehrmann (Harriet), Ket Watters (Hank), Sarah Meyeroff (Kate)

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Sarah Meyeroff (Kate) and Harold Peirce (Tom)

CHARACTERS
Hank, mid-sixties	Ket Watters	A Short List Suddenly thinking of you, I remember that you told me how you put a list of good things done by your largely wayward father into one of his coffin-coat pockets-- a short list, you added wryly. Or then again, I see in my mind's remembering eye what I will never see for real, the wind-swept early prairie grave of your worn-out young mother. That is what friendship means-- the sudden coming-here-now of involuntary memories that belong to those you love. -- James Keller
Harriet, late sixties	Martha Luehrmann
Tom, their son	Harold Pierce
Kate, their daughter-in-law	Sarah Meyeroff

Where is the Foundling's father hidden? Where is
the one who will say to you I endorse thee all over.”

-- Herman Melville

Harriet, a housewife in her mid-sixties disappears from home, as she takes leave of her memory with the onset of Alzheimer's Disease. Hank, her husband who retires with the sudden disappearance of his pension fund, realizes too late that he has been “absent without leave” from his life since he lost his mother at the age of ten, and now must work full-time to pay for his wife's nursing home. Their story intermingles with the visits of one of their sons, Tom and his wife, Kate who have to face a personal crisis of their own.

There is no break in the action of the play.