Bushel Presents Lemons, a new play by Sarah Todes, July 23 24

“Lemons explores how social media affects our relationship to grief,” explains the playwright Sarah Todes. “My new play centers on an obsession with fitness guru Amanda Kloots’ instagram account after Kloots lost her husband, Broadway performer Nick Cordero, to COVID in 2020. After recently losing her mother to cancer, the protagonist in Lemons absorbs Amanda’s public grief in the context of her private one.”

Featuring four performers—Marisa Caruso, David Gould, Keren Lugo, and Sarah Todes—Lemons begins as a personal narrative essay that quickly deconstructs, breaking out into scenes, being interrupted by other voices, and spiraling at the mercy of memory, imagination, and doom scrolling. Dance and movement at times accentuate, at times provide counterpoint to the rhythm of the first-person narrative.

Sarah Todes describes Lemons as “an examination of female strength, both physical and emotional, in the face of capitalist patriarchy. My play looks at how societal expectations have come to inform our relationship to grief, our identities, our bodies, and each other.”