Well Being: Mental-health coworkers share lessons from "Our Town"

The name of our town is West Norriton, 40 degrees north latitude, 75 degrees west longitude. Population: about 16,000, give or take a few hundred. It's just across the border from Norristown, the Montgomery County seat. Down there, at the bottom of that sloping cornfield, is the hospital for those with urgent psychiatric troubles. Goes by the name of Montgomery County Emergency Service, MCES for short.

Our story begins last spring with a team-building staff retreat. Leading it is Gabriel Nathan, an enthusiastic young man with a theatrical background. He serves as a development specialist at MCES.

"Work can become so busy and chaotic that we don't have time to look at each other, to stop and really appreciate each other," he laments to his coworkers.

He relates the story of Emily Webb, a character in Thornton Wilder's Our Town. After she dies and returns home as an apparition, she witnesses the majesty of the mundane, the glory of the ordinary, the everyday doings, connections, and strivings that weave the fabric of life and memory. At one point, frustrated by her invisibility, she pleads: "Oh, Mama, just look at me one minute as though you really saw me!"

Nathan urges his colleagues to do the same. After the joking subsides, there is silence. Eyes lock. Tears form. Soon there is plenty of hugging.

"It was a powerful moment," Nathan says later.

The next day, Rocio Nell, the CEO and medical director of MCES, asks Nathan what he plans to do for an encore.

At first, he is nonplussed, but then he makes a wild suggestion: Let's recruit the staff to perform Wilder's play.

They've been rehearsing Our Town since August - two hours, twice a week. The cast numbers 23. As thespians, they are amateurs. During the workday, they are crisis workers, case managers, social workers, registered nurses, psychiatric technicians, allied therapists, administrators.

Nathan, 34, of Wynnewood, majored in theater at Muhlenberg College. He's the play's director. He also acts in the central role of Stage Manager, the emcee of successive visits to the fictitious town of Grover's Corners, N.H.

It is now Wednesday evening in our town, and the November day is winding down like a tired clock. The lights are on in Building 33 on the Norristown State Hospital campus. In the magnificent auditorium, the cast is running through Act I "off book" - trying to deliver lines from memory and without the help of a script.

"Don't be ashamed to call for a line," says Nathan, who calls for a few himself.

When not playing Stage Manager, he is blocking scenes, adjusting positions, demonstrating pantomimed action on a stage largely without props or scenery, urging the faint of voice to speak louder, and dispensing compliments and hugs when performances hit the mark.

"Think about being present," Nathan declares at the outset. "Try to be here tonight. You're all very special, and what you're attempting to achieve is special, too." The heirs of Wilder's estate evidently agree; they waived the usual licensing fee, which otherwise would have broken Nathan's $1,000 budget, courtesy of the Clayman Family Foundation in Bala Cynwyd.

His actors are an eager, cheerful lot.

"I'm really excited about it," says Naomi Finkel, 56, a nurse manager, who plays Myrtle Webb, wife of the town newspaper editor. "What started as a team-building exercise is now much more than that. We've become a theater family."

For social worker Tova Tenenbaum, 26, who plays Rebecca Gibbs, the sister of protagonist George Gibbs, the joy of the experience is "seeing coworkers in a different light, getting a chance to be creative and laugh without the pressures of the workday."

For Steve Roddy, 47, a registered nurse, who gives a convincing impression of Simon Stimson, the drunk choirmaster, the play has been "quite an adventure" and a check-off on his bucket list. "I always wanted to try out for some sort of theater production."

John Gottlieb, 33, a registered nurse, who plays George Gibbs, has found acting stressful but rewarding. After a 12-hour shift, the prospect of rehearsal can seem like a drag. "But once you're there feeding off each other's energy, it becomes fun." He praises Nathan for doing a "fantastic job not only teaching us how to play but also how to act."

He could be speaking for the whole cast when he says, "I'm just trying to get comfortable onstage."

In Act III, the Stage Manager, standing in the cemetery amid the dead of Grover's Corners, says to the audience, "There are a lot of things we all know, but we don't take'm out and look at'm very often."

"This play is helping us make time for that," Nathan says. "This play is helping us take the things that we all know 'and look at'm.' "