Dr. Paula Caplan/SHADES

Written by Harvard psychologist Dr. Paula J. Caplan, Shades looks at the dynamics and complexities of families who all carry war trauma – particularly how people who love each other keep their differences from tearing them apart.

Shades opens in New York on November 17, with previews starting on November 9th, at the Studio at Cherry Lane Theater. We would love to invite you out to one of the earlier performances in the run should you be in NYC. And we wondered if you might be interested in interviewing Paula on 2 Boomer Babes Radio Hour.

The moving and powerful story – which has been described as “Eugene O’Neill meets ‘All in the Family’” –revolves around four people in Springfield, USA. Val, a nurse whose husband has recently died, has come to visit her WWII veteran father, who is about to retire from work that has defined him, and her brother, who is plagued by a mysterious illness after fighting in Vietnam. While visiting, Val goes to work as a home nurse for a Black woman veteran, June, whose war experience left her paralyzed from the neck down.

With an instinctively caring nature, Val desperately fights the reticence of her family to share their feelings and tries to help everyone else recover. However, Val herself is being torn apart by a dark secret about her late husband. With her relationship with her family and June developing, more and more secrets surfacing, and Don’s health getting dire, love and connection confronts the unprecedented challenges of trauma and truth.

Paula began her work with veterans more than a dozen years ago and in that time, among other things, started the ‘Listen to a Veteran!’ project which pairs any veteran with a non-veteran who will solely listen in respectful, total, wholehearted silence. Dr. Caplan has come to the unavoidable conclusion that for both women and men, for people of color, and for veterans, the sad truth is that cycles of hurt never end until they are able to speak up. And connection and love can make that possible.

You can click the link to a press release for more information: http://twoshepsthatpass.com/ShadesPressRelease.pdf