{"id":222209,"date":"2025-09-13T00:31:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T00:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/222209\/"},"modified":"2025-09-13T00:31:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T00:31:08","slug":"lions-at-philadelphia-fringe-festival-tackles-death-masculinity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/222209\/","title":{"rendered":"Lions at Philadelphia Fringe Festival tackles death, masculinity"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cLions,\u201d a new theatrical production from the Philadelphia-based ensemble Lightning Rod Special, is now previewing at the Proscenium Theatre at the Drake as part of the 2025 Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Written and performed by Scott R. Sheppard and Alice Yorke, the play draws on personal experience through the loss of their fathers within the span of a year. The work explores the emotional and logistical complexities of end-of-life care while challenging cultural narratives surrounding masculinity and legacy.\n<\/p>\n

In a recent interview with WHYY\u2019s \u201cMorning Edition,\u201d host Jennifer Lynn spoke with Sheppard and Yorke about how their shared grief informed the creative process. They describe the play as an attempt to \u201cdisassemble the myths\u201d their fathers held regarding what it means to be a great man.
\n\"AliceJennifer Lynn with Alice Yorke and Scott Sheppard on \u201cLions\u201d Fringe Show (Emma Lee\/WHYY)\n<\/p>\n

__\n <\/p>\n

Jennifer Lynn:<\/strong> And there\u2019s an artistic journey here. What happens in this show?\n<\/p>\n

Scott Sheppard:<\/strong> We kind of put on certain masculine items \u2014 clothing, mustaches \u2014 as a kind of armor as we face this very intense period where we\u2019re trying to figure out how to make sense of the way that our dads died.\n<\/p>\n

This kind of moment includes lots of very difficult choices. And, you know\u2014ventilators and breathing machines, comas\u2026\n<\/p>\n

Alice Yorke:<\/strong> They were both, in the last weeks of their lives, in ICU \u2014 both of them in these very tenuous situations around whether they\u2019d recover from their ailments and injuries or whether they wouldn\u2019t.\n<\/p>\n

And so the play is sort of based on, and set in, that time period we went through \u2014 the last two or three weeks of their lives. All of the stress and decisions you have to make, and the literal things you have to go through \u2014 not only to figure out who they were, but also how to represent what they might want.\n<\/p>\n

JL:<\/strong> Are you them?\n<\/p>\n

SS:<\/strong> Not exactly. We like to think of ourselves as the \u201cclerks of death.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

We\u2019re thinking about all of the business and all of the to-do lists and all of the ways in which we kind of put ourselves to work in order to grapple with their deaths and their memories \u2014 and also to not feel things by putting ourselves to work.\n<\/p>\n

AY:<\/strong> And I think in some ways, we are these clerks \u2014 and we are ourselves.\n<\/p>\n

When you are in a situation like the ones we were in, you also sort of have to become a person: \u201cThis is my job. My job is I go to the hospital. My job is I go through these belongings. I go through these decisions.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

So no, we are not Alice and Scott. We play these clerks. But in other ways, these clerks also are Alice and Scott.\n<\/p>\n

JL:<\/strong> And in reading a little summary about it, there\u2019s the word \u201cclown,\u201d there\u2019s \u201cKafka,\u201d a couple different things. This is really very intriguing.\n<\/p>\n

Okay, let\u2019s start with clown. Are you allowed to reveal what clown means in this story?\n<\/p>\n

AY:<\/strong> Yeah, I think clown is less like who shows up at your kid\u2019s birthday party, but more a sense of being able to see and sometimes talk to \u2014 or interact with \u2014 the audience, and a sense of play.\n<\/p>\n

We often think of plays as having what they call the \u201cfourth wall\u201d \u2014 this imagined wall between the audience and the actors.\n<\/p>\n

And when the \u201cclown,\u201d in quotes, is on stage, that wall often doesn\u2019t exist. So, the audience can be a participant. Not necessarily because we\u2019re going to come out and make you do something, but because we see you and we want you to feel as involved in the show as we are.\n<\/p>\n

JL:<\/strong> I\u2019m also very curious about \u2014 and we\u2019ll get to the Kafka part.\n<\/p>\n

SS:<\/strong> We\u2019ll never get to the Kafka thing. About the Kafka \u2026\n<\/p>\n

JL:<\/strong> Let\u2019s get to the Kafka part.\n<\/p>\n

It\u2019s supposed to be sort of \u201cFranz Kafka-esque\u201d \u2014 the Czech writer, 20th century, \u201cMetamorphosis\u201d was one of his big things. He also wrote something called \u201cLetter to His Father\u201d \u2014 an actual letter to his father.\n<\/p>\n

Is that how he\u2019s woven in, or is it more of a fantastical story that we would associate with Kafka?\n<\/p>\n

SS:<\/strong> It\u2019s not that specific work. It\u2019s more a kind of world where things have a very specific order \u2014 but that order doesn\u2019t make any sense, and you feel like you\u2019re in a bureaucratic maze that doesn\u2019t go anywhere.\n<\/p>\n

It just kind of spirals endlessly. In this case, us \u2014 when we were in this waiting period, wondering if this was going to be months of going to the hospital or just days \u2014 and feeling powerless.\n<\/p>\n

JL:<\/strong> Yeah. There\u2019s a lot of \u201cpowerless,\u201d yeah. So, in this sort of bureaucratic holding pattern, do we learn about your fathers?\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":222210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,80077,1448,2830,1311,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-222209","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-fringe-festival","10":"tag-pa","11":"tag-pennsylvania","12":"tag-philadelphia","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115194173170953253","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}