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Except for a
single chair the stage is bare, as Cullen takes the audience on the
roller coaster that was to be the first year of life with Gabriel.
Personal moments from that year are revealed sometimes full of
intense laughter and at other points quiet sadness.
"Everything was
going along exactly as we had planned. It was a typical pregnancy.
Despite the fact that I was bursting with fears and anxieties about
becoming a father, I felt prepared. I had read all the books, didn’t
miss a single Lamaze class, I was even practicing my Kegel Exercises.
I was ready or
so I thought.
The bottom
dropped out the day Gabriel was born. What were we supposed to do? I
didn’t know how to be a father to a child with a disability.
Slowly however,
through some pretty extraordinary - as well as life’s everyday
mundane events, we began to move forward. I fell in love with my
son.
I began writing
what would become Afraid to Look Down back in 1997. Gabriel had just
turned a year old - yet it felt like we had lived a lifetime in that
year. I was searching for a way to channel all of the emotions and
feelings I experienced on a daily basis. The play that began to
emerge however was just awful, a lot of - "woe is me, I hate my
life, your life is so much easier than mine" Thankfully I came to my
senses and realized that no one would sit through such drivel. So I
walked away from the piece. When I returned I was resolved to write
only the truth, to expose myself warts and all, and most importantly
to keep my sense of humor.
I tried to be
very careful about tone as the play began to take shape through its
various workshops and staged readings under the direction of
Patricia Crotty. I didn't want the play to become a sugary triumph
of the human spirit narrative - it's simply the story of how I
learned to get out of my own way to let Gabriel teach me how to be
his father."
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