The production of Brendan Bourque-Sheil's latest work begins its run at Stages March 25.
“I sort of got an unplanned tour of the American healthcare system — I saw some health-care workers who were miraculously resilient, and then I saw other health-care workers who were deeply burned out and resentful of their jobs,” he continues.
“Sunrise Coven” revolves around Hallie, a nurse whom Borque-Sheil calls a composite of the many health-care workers he encountered who cared for his mother, stalwarts and burnouts alike. Despite the grim circumstances, he found them to be an unlikely but essential source of humor. As Hallie loses her eyesight and her nurse’s license, her desire to continue tending to her elderly patients leads her to enlist the local coven, headed up by a woman named Winter Moon. Bourque-Sheil was raised by a lesbian couple who were also Wiccans, so he knew the territory.
Also author of 2016’s “The Book of Maggie,” in which Judas Iscariot and Pontius Pilate try to enter heaven by talking a woman out of suicide, Bourque-Sheil acknowledges “I don't seem to be able to write anything other than dark comedy.” For his new play, he wanted to balance that irreverence with a certain compassion for his characters.
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