Shadowed Dreamer *

The most amazing thing about the one-man show Shadowed Dreamer, is that the man on stage has lived through the whole thing in order to tell the tale. For someone who has been through an incredible amount of mental, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse Stephen Hart is a fairly upbeat guy. He doesn't seem depressed as his adoptive mom was, he didn't profess to abusing alcohol as his step-mother did, and he seems relatively healthy despite the fact the is living with HIV. It is a truly amazing story from start to finish. He is such an incredible person to have survived thus far in his life. But his story is really the exception, not the rule.

I was disappointed that he spoke very little about his experience of growing up gay and can only guess that other things were much more weighty in his life. I would have liked to hear about growing up gay, what that meant to him and how it feels to be living with HIV. Curiously we never really hear how he recovered from these life events. Did he attend therapy? For how long? Was he on anti-depressants? I suppose the show wasn't really about that-it was about survival and the tenacity of the human spirit. He really is the exceptional human being to live through all that he has and to continue to have such an open outlook on life and for that he should be applauded.