Professor to feature play in ‘Going Solo Festival’

“What are the moral imperatives of our time? What’s our responsibility to future generations? What’s crazy? Is doing nothing just as crazy as doing something extreme? How far are you willing to follow through with ‘I’d do anything for my child?’”

Professor Kenneth Weitzman said these questions are addressed in his new play “Fire in the Garden,” which will be performed at the Indiana Repertory Theatre in Indianapolis this month.

The show will be featured in the theater’s “Going Solo Festival,” a series of one-member-cast productions, along with “Neat” by Charlayne Woodard and “In Acting Shakespeare” by James DeVita.

Weitzman has been a faculty member at IU for three years. He has written more than a dozen plays, his latest being “Fire in the Garden.”

Weitzman started off as an actor, but he made the jump to writing.

“The writing part was much more satisfying than the performing part,” he said.

Weitzman went to the University of Michigan, where he received a B.A. in American studies. After that, he attended the University of California at San Diego, where he received an M.F.A. in playwriting.  

During his senior year at University of Michigan, Weitzman wrote his first play, “S.N.A.G (Sensitive New Age Guy),” a one-man play about manhood. Since then, Weitzman’s plays have all been multi-character productions.

Weitzman said “Fire in the Garden” is a semi-autobiographical play that takes a comical look at fatherhood. It is about a man who is about to be a father and becomes fascinated with the story of Norman Morrison. Morrison was a man who, in 1965, lit himself on fire as an act of protest while holding his 1-year-old daughter in his arms.

His daughter survived, but Morrison did not.

The play looks at difficult parenting questions that the Morrison case arouses, questions Weitzman himself said he struggled with before the birth of his oldest son.

“Ultimately I think it’s about being a parent in this day and age, specifically a father, and the question of how far you will go to assure your children will have a better life than you did and whether that’s even possible,” “Fire in the Garden” director
Larissa Kokernot said.