Theater writers Daniel Martin Chadwick and Timothy Brown are asking for your financial support for the next step in getting their new and original musical play off the ground.

“Loving Vivian,” is about a fictional legendary 82-year-old singer, actress, and songwriter suffering from dementia. Her biographer, hoping to get intimate information for her book, helps Vivian’s family discover that Vivian can be temporarily brought back to lucidity by her own music and tell her own story. In the process, through a series of unexpected twists, Vivian reveals truths that shock, move, and eventually heal her family.

The play was inspired by the Music & Memory Program, which provides recorded music for dementia sufferers that can temporarily restore them to varying degrees of lucidity. “Loving Vivian” is perhaps the only dramatic presentation about dementia that you’ll ever see that has a happy ending. In a sea of dark and grim (but important) works about this horrible disease, this theater experience is meant to be uplifting. It is designed to give hope to people diagnosed with dementia, as well as their families. It also educates audiences about this disease and how to care for loved ones who have it.

The 13th draft is ready for its first reading, a customary process through which a work is read and sung aloud with real actors in order to see how it plays, invite feedback from an audience, and note needed rewrites. It is a necessary step toward getting the show backed by a producer who will see it through to a full-scale production.

The play has already garnered some attention from at least one high-level NYC producer. If you’d like to be a part of this (and say you were on opening night), please donate what you can comfortably afford toward the costs of venue rental, cast and crew honorariums, and other expenses. Thank you.