POETRY Local writer, nurse brings 'Intensive Care' play to YSU

YOUNGSTOWN -- "Intensive Care," a play based on a set of poems by award-winning writer and emergency-room nurse Jeanne Bryner of Newton Falls, will be performed Saturday at 8 p.m. in Kilcawley Center's Chestnut Room on the Youngstown State University campus.
Bryner, an emergency room nurse for 25 years at Forum Health's Trumbull Memorial Hospital, took on the voices of Northeastern Ohio nurses, ranging in age from 22 to 92, in the poems as part of her Kent State University master's thesis.
"The piece honors and celebrates the lives and the work of nurses," said Bryner, who is a community affiliate of YSU's Center for Working-Class Studies.
The play, which was most recently staged at Edinburgh International Festival in Scotland, is produced and directed by Cleveland native Nicole Pearce. This is the first time Pearce, who does the lighting for the New York Ballet, has directed this kind of production.
Tickets can be purchased at the CWCS in Smith Hall on Fifth Avenue for a suggested donation of $10. For more information, call (330) 941-2978.
Bryner's work has been partially sponsored by CWCS as part of its effort to build a collection of workers' oral histories that reflect the history of the Mahoning Valley.
Bryner will give a workshop on the project at 2 p.m. Saturday in Kilcawley Center's Presidential Suite.