BY MERRITT BALDWIN ’26

On Sunday November 24th, Jordan Azzinaro (‘26’s) Playwright’s Lab, The Leper and the Damned, opened in Studio B of Skidmore’s Janet Kinghorn Bernhard Theater. This production ran earlier in the semester, on September 15th and 16th. Approaching the theater from the main entrance, my curiosity was piqued by a window displaying a figure moving about a largely empty candle lit room. Only those familiar with the JKB will know that this is the space for the show. The others just have to wonder, in the few minutes that it takes them to enter the building, ascend to the second floor, and cross the threshold into the studio, just what is going on in that room. 

The studio is laid out as if it’s a church, with the audience facing out from what would be the altar, into two rows of benches, which represent the nave where the congregation would sit. Crawling among the benches is actor Josh Lucey (‘25), draped in a burned and ripped white button-down. His movement is animalistic, but not imitative—he seems to have captured a style of movement for a character that is not quite animal, and not quite human. The play has yet to begin and it’s evident that this creature is damned; Lucey wears dark eyes and a matching dark expression. Two or so minutes before the play is set to begin, he makes his way to an open window on the audience’s left. One is unsure if he is looking out into the night or into his reflection on the windowpane. 

Actor Maggie Krieg (‘26) takes the stage and kneels in prayer, her character messily conjoining snippets from three different Catholic prayers—a fault in her character’s memory that the damned acknowledges. What follows is a dialogue between her and Lucey’s character, in which she reveals her suicidal ideation and crisis of faith. They turn their attention to the empty window, and peer out at the stars through the “end-of-the-world rain” that batters the “stained” glass. The invocation of the apocalyptic indicates a recurring theme in this play: crisis, indecision, and (inner) conflict—and what we do in the face of it.

Krieg’s character asks if the damned knows about Laika, a Soviet-era canine cosmonaut. She was a stray that was adopted into the Sputnik 2 mission, which launched in 1957. She didn’t survive the mission, burning up just five hours into the flight. Laika’s presence in the play seems to serve as an example of unkindness and cruelty towards those who are innocent, and her venture into space situates her within the recurring image of the stars (which Azzinaro emphasizes in their use of flickering candles on the stage).

Krieg’s and Lucey’s characters continue to contemplate the love, hate, and kindness in themselves and in God, and eventually the third character enters the scene. Ben Harris (‘27) enters as the priest, and tells Krieg’s character that he is locking up the church, notably not heeding the damned, who is invisible to him. Harris’ priest is amiable yet uneasy, and his inner conflict is evident in his long bouts of silence.

The priest, the leper, and the damned engage in a swirling dialogue about kindness, love, hate, God, the devil, life, death, salvation, goodness, and doubt, ending at last when the priest and the damned have left, leaving the leper sobbing in prayer. Krieg’s performance, not just in the emotional conclusion, but throughout the play is marked by an incredible feat of expressiveness. Most of the character’s story could be read on her face. Although her expressions were very telling, her movements were restrained, a confinement that emphasizes her character’s depth and inner struggle.

The play seems to poke at many questions surrounding the complications and conflicts of believing in God, and the audience engages in that emotional task right alongside the actors and playwright. The answers aren’t clear in this play, humans are cruel and they’re kind, God loves and he punishes, and we are left to decide how to proceed given those truths. I myself felt unsure about the conclusions that the leper, the damned, and the priest reached. Was I reading it correctly? Was God an antagonist? I seemed to embody and parallel the inner conflicts on the stage, though in a more removed, spectatorial way. The play ends with the leper praying, yes, but not to God, and not to the stars. She pauses her Our Father/Hail Mary mashup and looks up as if she heard something, and asks “Laika?”.

Photos by Logan Waugh ’26

***

Merritt Baldwin ’26 is a staff writer for the Skidmore Theater Living Newsletter