SHRINES by Ashley Rose Wellman

A family stuck in a horrifying cycle of perpetual mourning throws a party for a dead teenage girl, on what would have been her 30th birthday. When the girl’s former high school sweetheart arrives and drops a major bombshell, the night descends into chaos and forces them to contend with deeply held trauma and disturbing secrets. SHRINES is a play about blurred boundaries, Facebook, and the way we grieve now.
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SHRINES

Recommended by

  • Paul Donnelly:
    29 Jun. 2022
    “ A shrine can be a loving memorial, it can also be a stifling prison of oppressive memory. The shrine to Abby is both. We see the impact of loss and refusing to face loss on four deeply sympathetic characters trapped in a prison of grief. When one begins to break free it at first hurts, but ultimately liberates the others. This is a complex and moving story related with skill and empathy. ”
  • Mary DeCarlo:
    23 Jun. 2022
    “ A devastating portrait of a grief that lodges in your heart and refuses to leave. The parents of a dead teenage girl hold tight to their trauma in the form of birthday parties and imagining the life she would have lived with her high school sweetheart. A darkly funny meditation on the transformative and addictive power of grief. I was lucky enough to see a staged reading at the Valdez Theatre Conference and the characters and themes will stay with me for a long time. ”
  • Philip Middleton Williams:
    16 Jun. 2022
    “ The way we grieve tells a lot about how we see ourselves in relation to our loved ones: those still with us, and those we mourn. In "Shrines," Ashley Rose Wellman shows us how one family clings to the memory of a lost child and does it in a touching, often humorous, and at times creepy way, yet we never lose sight of the loss each character feels and how it has changed them over the years. ”
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2W, 2M
PAUL, male, late-twenties, almost thirty.
BECKS, female, mid-thirties.
LYNN, female, fifties-sixties.
GORDON, male, fifties-sixties.

Development History

  • Reading
    ,
    Great Plains Theatre Commons
    ,
    2021
  • Reading
    ,
    IAMA Theatre Company
    ,
    2020
  • Commission
    ,
    Humanitas PLAY LA Workshop
    ,
    2019
  • Reading
    ,
    Echo Theater Company and Stage Raw/PLAY LA Theater Festival Weekend
    ,
    2019