THE HEALTHY OYSTERS

​Do you know how the Margaritifera oyster produces pearls? By contracting a near-fatal disease, by enveloping an unassimilable foreign body, a grain of sand, for instance, in a ball of mucus. It almost dies in the process. To hell with the pearl, give me the healthy oyster. Virtue is not bound up with misery, my friend.
     -Bertolt Brecht, ‘Life Of Galileo’

The Healthy Oyster Collective is comprised of three artists (Sarah Lusche, Eric Marlin and Josephine Wheelwright) who have joined together to collaboratively make new plays together. The work the Healthy Oysters create is politically inquisitive and socially progressive, with an emphasis on building playful forms in which to explore serious ideas. We reject that idea that political theatre is meant to be dour and glibly pessimistic. Our work eschews hermetic naturalism in favor of theatrical forms that find honesty in their ritualistic artifice - mystery plays, absurdism, musical theatre, to name a few. Our work adapts older dramaturgical styles, and employs them to create character-driven dramas. Starting from this foundation, our work explores an unfixed but recurring roster of themes that reflect our overlapping interests, including the intersection of community and faith, the experiences of women, class divides, poetic language, and flamboyant theatricality. 

Eric is a co-founder of and the resident playwright for the Healthy Oyster Collective. He wrote their debut production, If the Saints Arrive in Germany, which was presented by the Metro Arts Initiative as a site-specific work in the sanctuary of Metro Baptist Church. He is currently developing Kingdom Crosses Over and ​Pastoral Play with them. For more information, please visit our website here.