Me to Play

Dan Moran and Chris Jones are two professional New York actors who share six decades of acting experience on film, television, and the stage. They have shared Broadway dressing rooms, and now they share Parkinson’s disease, a progressive disorder that disables the brain cells that help control movement, balance, and expression. Its cause is unknown. There is no known cure. It is a disease that affects all the tools an actor uses to undertake his craft. These actors’ physical abilities and mental faculties are diminished, but their drive is not. Defying the disease, Dan and Chris bravely put up an Off-Broadway production of Samuel Beckett’s “Endgame,” a difficult and hilarious piece of theater featuring Hamm, a character who is blind and cannot stand, and Clov, who can shuffle but not sit down. Together, these characters play out a vaudevillian routine of repetitive sorrow as they await the inevitable end to their diminishing lives. Beckett wrote the play, the perfect metaphor for living with Parkinson’s, after caring for his mother and favorite aunt as they slowly died of the disease. “Me To Play” is about more than mounting a play. The documentary is a love letter to creative lives in New York City, to the art of acting, and to the genius of Beckett. It illustrates how Parkinson’s disease affects Dan’s and Chris’ capacity to do the work they love at the level they have always done it. By opening their experience to us as they take on this play and navigate their lives with all the challenges that Parkinson’s brings -- making dinner, riding the subway, going to the doctor, being husbands and fathers, and living actors’ lives that can only take place in the heart of New York City – Dan and Chris show that they can meet even the most difficult circumstances with aplomb, senses of humor, and heart. They prove that when the body gives way, what’s left is soul. If these two actors can press through disability to keep doing what they love to do, so can we.