Remembering Sharon

About the Book

Remembering Sharon is a play Nick wishes did not have to be written. It is a personal story. Sharon is—was a friend, even after all these years, it is still difficult to write. Putting Sharon in the past tense is not easy. This project, talking about this project, considering this project, wondering about it, planning it, thinking about it, outlining it, and shaping it has kept Sharon in my present for many years since her death, her murder. I don’t like that reality. I often wonder what her life might have been how we may have grown as friends. Would we have grown closer or drifted apart? Friends do that. I have stayed close with the rest of her family. Was that because of her murder? Did her death bond us more significantly? These things, all these things became the foundation for Remembering Sharon. How can empathy be shown? Can it be shown? Should it be shown? What is tasteful? Is that really my job as a playwright? In past works that dealt with unsolved crime, Sharon was my silent motivation. It didn’t quite get the word out as forcefully as I wanted my Hall-Mills play was a Hall-Mills play. I am still OK with that. I seemed to have a knack for this kind of thing. I brought up Sharon in every interview, but good writers stuck to the main subject. I had to accept the best way to bring attention to Sharon was to write about Sharon. Remember Sharon! So with this play, I am remembering Sharon. As audiences are told very quickly, Sharon was my friend who disappeared from her home two days before her sixteenth birthday in 1982. She was found murdered in a wooded area only a few yards away from her family home. Remembering Sharon is probably not just a play; it is an experience. It is a hope for an opportunity for a community to come together to talk about this loss and perhaps bring a resolution to this unsolved murder in contemporary 2012. It may also serve as a reminder to all of us that we must take care of our loved ones and talk talk! Talk about safety and common sense issues about safety and crime prevention and a better awareness of how we can keep ourselves and children safe!

About the Author

Nick has worked in just about every aspect of the entertainment industry. He is most notably known to NJ and NYC audiences as a director, playwright, and casting director. Remembering Sharon is Nick’s fifth play published work with Trafford Publishing. His other publications include the following: The Watseka Wonder: When Mary Came Home; The Final Word: The Hall-Mills Murders; and Lizbeth of Maplecroft Lizzie Borden After the Axe. The Online Student’s Survival Guide is a work Nick published with Trafford to assist adult learners who are interested in returning to school as distance learners. This is a nondramatic work but perhaps the most dramatic thing he’s ever done as he returned to school to complete his education as a lifelong learner through brain cancer surgery and follow-up treatment that included aggressive chemotherapy and radiation treatment. Writing and publishing his plays kept him busy through his healing process. As of yet, he still has unpublished works, which are over thirty children’s play adaptations and which he is in the process of combining into a collective work. This work will include the timeless classics: Cinderella, The Wizard of Oz, Pinocchio, The Goose Girl, Jack and the Beanstalk (a play in rhyme), and the very popular Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Nick believes every play should be released when the time is right and proper. The time for Remembering Sharon is right and proper.