Phoenix Festival Playbill 2025 (1) - Flipbook - Page 7
SUGAR RAY
by Laurence Holder
Directed by Luther D. Wells
Cast
REGINALD L. WILSON*.............................................……….Sugar Ray
Production Team
Edith Carnley — Costume Design
Fulton C. Hodges— Production Manager
Place: A Gym in Harlem
Run time: 80 minutes without intermission
*Member, Actors’ Equity Association
Some years ago I received word that my paternal grandmother had
Alzheimer’s; an irreversible, progressive disease that attacks and destroys the
brain’s cells, which results in a loss of memory and other essential cognitive
functions. After my parents divorced I had not spent much time with my
father’s side of the family, and had not seen my grandmother for quite some
time. However, my sister and I decided to pay a visit where she was in an
assistant living facility in Georgia.
Hoping to spend some quality time with her before the inevitable, we had
been warned that she was no longer recognizing family members. Initially,
we found this to be true. However, after sitting and talking with her for hours,
there came a point when it became very clear to my sister and me, that she
remembered and recognized who we were. It was the most wonderful and
thrilling moment of our visit. We could see the light of recognition in her
eyes. A few month later she passed away from the horrible deadly disease that
steals life both imaginatively and 昀椀guratively.
In Sugar Ray, we 昀椀nd our protagonist in the early stages of Alzheimer’s.
He’s been diagnosed, and perhaps it is this knowledge that motivates Sugar
