Cause Célèbre Productions Presents: Someone is Sending a Message

Join us for an unforgettable play with Broadway actors and Tony Award winners including Roberta Wallach, Penny Fuller and James Naughton.

Written by Susan Charlotte,
Directed by Antony Marsellis

Someone Is Sending a Message is based on a true story of persistence and hope in the face of adversity--a story that revolves around a courageous young man named Nick Springer. It’s also the story of a painter named Sheila, a friend of Nick who is at a crossroads in her art and in her life.

Suddenly she receives a phone call: What do you mean Nick is dead?

The same Nick she spoke with two weeks ago, who she had known since he was 13. The same Nick who had contracted Meningitis at camp and, despite quadruple amputations, became a Paralympic Gold Medalist, an international advocate for life, survival, vaccination, and a national hero. Nick never let any obstacle get in his way, but while swimming in a friend’s pool his heart gave out.

Sheila turns to Facebook to learn more about what happened, where hundreds of people have shared messages. Strangely, every time she tries to post her own, words appear on her screen: ​

Someone is sending a message.

So begins Sheila's surrealistic journey, so affected by Nick's extraordinary life and unexpected death that she begins to face the obstacles in her own life, make sense of its twists and turns, and come to terms with the death of her brother, who was also in his 30s. Sheila stares at the screen as feelings from her past appear alongside the messages from Nick’s friends, the two worlds overlapping. Perhaps there is a message for her.

Suddenly one appears:

Life goes on. With or without you. You can either shut down or join in.

It's from Nick! Sheila turns and faces her incomplete canvas, and is able, at last, to add the final brushstrokes.

Host or Publisher New York Society for Ethical Culture