PGHwrites: Andrew Swensen & Yan Pang’s “Shelter” (Musical Theatre Showcase)

This special PGHwrites program features a musical theater showcase of Shelter from the minds of Andrew Swensen and Yan Pang.

Shelter tells the story of scars carried from childhood into adulthood exploring how they distort our vision of ourselves and damage our relationships but also ultimately create the challenges by which we claim our strength and achieve self-determination. Paige our protagonist takes a journey through a series of memories traveling with her childhood self through her past. She confronts unresolved sadness and unhealed brokenness resulting from her mother’s alcoholism and this journey leads her to confront her own dysfunction in a life where she wants to help everyone but fears substantial attachments. Her life telescopes into an unhealthy mix of self-serving selflessness and psychological isolation a well-wrought “shelter” that she has constructed from the pain of life. She emerges on the other side when she confronts her own role in what she has become releases her blame toward her mother and opens herself to the prospect of a genuine balanced connection to another. 

This is the story of tearing down the walls that we ourselves have built. We see Paige before the walls were built (Young Paige) and then see the current life of fragmentation constructed as a shelter built around the place of her pain. The story then follows the path of her bringing down the walls which are not actually protecting her but are keeping her from the possibility of living life fully.

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Host or Publisher City of Asylum Pittsburgh