Whole Against the Sky

Whole Against the Sky is inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke’s observation: “Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.”

Whole Against the Sky follows a man (Jack) who returns home for his mother’s wedding only to find her incapable of accepting consolation when her fiancé dies suddenly the night before. He then finds himself incapable of accepting her overtures of reconciliation two years later. This central narrative, is punctuated with confessions at odds with characters’ observed behavior and scenes of Jack and his sister (Linda) struggling with partners to find the distance to see and be seen “whole against the sky.” Paul Donnelly directs.