Mayra David - Director
This is a show about a TV and film actor, Joshua Ritter, who is the father to severely autistic twin sons. That such an absurdly idiosyncratic life could have anything in common with anybody else's seems like a long stretch. For goodness sake, they live in South Florida! Yet, this is a deeply personal artistic endeavor for me as well as Josh.
As a director, I approached this project with the understanding that humor is often the most humanizing lens through which we process the most profound struggles. In this show, comedy will not be used to trivialize the experience, but to illuminate the absurdity and unpredictability that often accompanies life with a loved one who has severe disabilities. The laughter will serve as a bridge between moments of emotional devastation and triumph, capturing the push-pull between tragedy and comedy in a way that resonates on a deeply human level.
Josh and I have been friends since our undergraduate years at Ramapo College. We began working together first on his short stories before eventually taking on personal essays in the braided format. The autobiographical nature of his stories compelled me to draw on my lived experience within my own family where loved ones suffer from severe mental illness and require life-long care. It is from that commonality that we wanted to create a show that would focus on Josh's role as a working actor and primary caregiver to his sons. As his editor and story consultant (and ultimately the director of the show), my primary responsibility was to keep true to that idea. We did not want to write a show about autism or even his own children with autism. We would not speak for individuals with autism or the autism community at large. While we aimed to create a piece that invites empathy and understanding, we did not want to create a piece of activism. We want to show a life in which a creative person continues his artistic profession: performing and sharing a story in the midst of chaos and responsibility. This is the resilience of artistic expression, even when life’s most demanding moments threaten to overshadow everything else.
To further cement the show's intent, we wove into the story Josh's memories as his own father's son and how that shaped him as an adult. With Josh on stage with nothing but a microphone--recalling a stand-up comedy show-- we created three story blocks: the past, the present as a working actor, and the present as a caregiver. There will be moments in the performance when the audience will feel a sense of tension between sadness and laughter, and a quiet recognition of the resilience required of both the caregiver and the children. Ultimately, we wanted to make clear that there are no "answers" or even a "conclusion"-- neither of us has that kind of insight and to claim otherwise would be disingenuous. What we did want is to lead the audience to our hard-won, battle-tested wisdom: the only way forward is to find grace in radical acceptance. This is what it means to live this reality, balancing moments of joy with pain, and comic absurdities with heartbreaking truths.
My hope is that this work offers a moment of recognition where others can see their stories reflected and where all of us—whether caregivers or not—can come together in shared humanity and laughter.
--Mayra David (Director/Story Consultant/Editor - "Adventures in Baby Hitting")