Impactful play about family's ALS journey comes to Tucson

Relics are those little mementos from our lives meant to remind the world we existed.

But they are more than that in Ain Gordon and Josh Quillen’s play “Relics and Their Humans“; they are signposts on a lonely and painful road that Quillen’s mother, Sue, navigated when his father, Jerry, was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 2006.

The car keys Sue took from Jerry when she learned he was using his cane on the gas pedal when he was driving.

The journal Jerry kept chronicling the disease’s progression that began with “I’ve got a little drag in my foot.”

Jerry’s playlist woven throughout the hour-long play that Arizona Arts Live brought to Centennial Hall on Thursday, Sept. 19, and Friday, Sept. 20.

Tucson is only the third city to see the play, which Gordon and Quillen worked on during a weeklong University of Arizona residency in 2022.

“Relics” is the story of Sue’s caretaker journey, which she recounted to her son and Gordon in a podcast recorded at Josh Quillen’s Dover, Ohio, childhood home in 2019. The bulk of the play came from the podcast transcript, interwoven with soundbites of Jerry’s playlist, including a song whose title and lyrics came from that fateful statement “I’ve got a little drag in my foot.” Quillen and Gordon sang the song with UA music students Brandon Arzate and Nicandro Guereque.

The play uses unconventional stagecraft, starting with having the sold-out audience, about 50 of whom were local ALS caretakers or family members, on stage with the performers.

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We were sitting spitting distance from Gordon, who played himself, and Sue, alternating between two mics depending on who was talking; and Quillen, who sat behind a small soundboard asking Sue questions about the three years she spent taking care of his father. As she talked, she smoked; throughout the conversation, Quillen keeps track of the number of cigarettes.

The play opens with Gordon recounting Sue making her special Reuben sandwich for dinner, even though Gordon is gluten-free and eschews the Rueben’s Thousand Island dressing. Not to be deterred, Sue runs out to Buehler’s, the area’s leading grocer, we’re told, and buys overpriced gluten-free bread to accommodate the dietary restrictions.

We go through Sue’s journey, from the neurologist delivering the diagnosis with emotional detachment — “... you will eventually lose all muscle control, and then you will die within 1½ to three years. Do you have any questions?” — to Quillen’s memory of losing track of his father during a walk and finding him doing donuts in his wheelchair on a busy street. Turns out Jerry had slumped over onto the joystick and couldn’t straighten out the chair, which was going round and round in circles.

There is no resounding moral of the story with “Relics,” no angry outburst of why me, why us. Instead, Gordon and Quillen balance humor and sorrow to tell us a wonderfully paced, colorful story that doesn’t feel devastating or superficial.

“Relics and Their Humans,” co-commissioned by Arizona Arts Live, is Gordon and Quillen’s second collaboration. In 2015, Gordon, an Obie Award-winning writer, director and performer, and Quillen, a composer, writer and percussionist with the New York quartet Sō Percussion, created “Radicals in Miniature” based on Gordon’s youth in New York City’s alternative scene.

Friday’s performance starts at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $30, $10 for students through arizonaartslive.com.