The church basement space has been configured to feel as closely contained as possible yet accommodate a small audience seated on risers around a modest playing area. The stage is set with ten gray slat-back chairs that the cast of six repeatedly rearranges to mark changes between scenes. The proximity is the point, the intimate immediacy is the intent, for we are here to witness up close a dramatized support group for people impacted by the pressure of caring for impaired people in a country that fundamentally doesn’t.  “Millions of people feel like they’re failing at aging – or failing at caring – when in fact it’s society that’s failing them,” says Lise Bruneau, portraying the author of a book cited as a source for this astonishing and stirring world premiere. Who Cares: The Caregiver Interview Project — an extensively workshopped piece of theater presented by Voices Festival Productions — is structured as an artful pastiche of touching true stories gleaned from interviews and retold by a versatile cast playing multiple roles. The effect over two hours and two acts of vignettes, anecdotes, and dance breaks is a deepening and moving immersion in human distress and resilience in the face of a politics of disregard. “Tasty morsels of crisis. Yum!” says Todd Scofield facetiously, playing a husband who is caring for his mentally diminishing wife. Kelly Renee Armstrong, Laura Shipler Chico, and Lise Bruneau in ‘Who Cares: The Caregiver Interview Project.’ Photo by Peggy Ryan. As the emotionally vivid stories of compassionate and encumbering caregiving unfold, many turn on the unlucky ineluctability of memory loss. Visually grounding such stories, set designer Heidi Castle-Smith has conceived a stage surface painted to seem a hospital-white tile floor on which are splayed umber tendrils of fading brain veins. Lighting designer David M. Smith deploys a ceiling full of LEDs to shift deftly from a clinical bright glare to a mirrored disco to private encounters in penumbras. And among sound designer David Lamont Wilson’s playlist pleasures are such on-message tunes as “We Are Family” by Sister Sledge, James Taylor’s “You’ve Got a Friend,” Ellie Holcomb’s “I Will Carry You.” and “(It’s a) Family Affair” by Sly and the Family Stone. This work of verbatim theater has an evident dramaturgical aspiration: it wants participants in the depicted support group to seem like family to one another — and for some of that familial feeling to osmose to us. Whether and to what extent this public performance does so will necessarily be a private matter, shaped and/or triggered by one’s experience of caregiving and/or being cared for. The connection is our common mortality, and Who Cares generously invites us into a communal space where stories we are spectators to can stand in for our own and remind us to embrace the limits of our lives and the expanse of our loves. CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Joelle Denise; Kendall Arin Claxton and Lise Bruneau; Joelle Denise and Kelly Renee Armstrong; Todd Scofield and Laura Shipler Chico, in ‘Who Cares: The Caregiver Interview Project.’ Photos by Peggy Ryan. The acting is at first everyday-casual, almost offhand, as the support group members take their seats around the circle. An early story hints at the pain of a loved one’s mental decline: Scoffield as a son recounts how dementia made his mother, portrayed by Laura Shipler Chico, behave inappropriately and become uncharacteristically mean. Understudying Kelly Renee Armstrong on opening night, Llogan Paige, script in hand, was persuasive as a group member whose mother, Jennifer Nelson, once a legendary theatermaker in DC, now has no comprehension. Because many of the original interviewees were friends and colleagues in the local theater world, there is a motif throughout Who Cares of cognitive curtains coming down. Chairs are reset as the scene shifts to a book reading at Politics and Prose where Lisa Bruneau as Theresa Connolly, author of The Measure of Our Age, lofts aphorisms (“We want to get old, but not be old”) and shares statistics about longevity in a broken care system where the aggregate free labor of caregivers is tantamount to slavery: AARP estimates that about 50 million informal caregivers — most of them unpaid family members — provide an average of 24 hours a week of care to people 50 and older, over an average of four years. Kendall Arin Claxton chokes up as she recalls “bathing the mother who used to bathe me.” Sometimes a faint and poignant piano underscores such tender moments. Joelle Denise as the support group leader is a fount of empathy and an anchor of solace. Other scenes include a visit to a residential care facility, a comedy club, a house of worship, and a droll sketch inspired by that master poet of decrepitude Samuel Beckett. The pieced-together dramatic form — created by co-authors Ari Roth, A. Lorraine Robinson, and Vanessa Gilbert and sensitively directed by Kathryn Chase Bryer — functions like a well-stitched quilt, with each patch its own presence and a resonant theme threaded through: stark content about failed government policy interwoven with amusing and heartrending human interest narratives of loss and care. In the process, a common experience rarely articulated outside private lives transforms into a theater-prompted public conversation. By the second act, the acting intensifies, storylines become more dramatic, and the stakes get higher. For instance, there is a gripping scene about taking away the car keys from an elder who is no longer safe behind the wheel. Overall, the show’s slow build may be longer than necessary. When accomplished actors such as Scoffield, Denise, Claxton, Chico, and Bruneau let loose in anger and anguish as they eventually do, one truly senses the beating heart of this momentous material. And one can appreciate the movement-based music interludes that infuse respite and reflection. Running Time: Two hours and 20 minutes, including a 15-minute intermission. Who Cares: The Caregiver Interview Project plays through February 2, 2025, presented by Voices Festival Productions, performing at Universalist National Memorial Church, 1810 16th St, NW, Washington, DC. Tickets ($45, with discounts available for groups, patrons under 30, affinity groups, and artists) are available online. Who Cares: The Caregiver Interview Project Co-written by Ari Roth, A. Lorraine Robinson, and Vanessa Gilbert With original stand-up material from Jim Meyer and excerpts from the work of M.T. Connolly and her book, The Measure of Our Age: Navigating Care, Safety, Money, and Meaning Later in Life Directed by Kathryn Chase Bryer CAST Kelly Renee Armstrong*: Rachel, Rev. Leslie, Tyra, Bee, Tanty Lise Bruneau*: Theresa, June, Nurse, Hospice Laura Shipler Chico: Sarah, IONA Program Director, Jim’s mom Kendall Arin Claxton*: Kris, Kathleen, Cecilia, Selam Todd Scofield*: Jim, P&P Owner Joelle Denise*: Lorri Understudies: Rachel Manteuffel, Llogan Paige, Robert Bowen Smith Casting: Daryl Eisenberg, CSA, Eisenberg Casting *Denotes member of Actors Equity Association CREATIVE TEAM David Elias* (Stage Manager); Nora Butler (Assistant Stage Manager); David Smith (Lighting Designer); David Lamont Wilson (Sound Designer); Brandee Mathies (Costume Designer); Heidi Castle-Smith (Scenic Designer); Tyra Bell (Props Designer); Robert Bowen Smith (Movement Consultant) SEE ALSO: Voices Festival Productions to open ‘Who Cares: The Caregiver Interview Project’ (news story, December 27, 2024) Voices Festival Productions announces cast for ‘Who Cares: The Caregiver Interview Project’ (news story, October 16, 2024)