An Accident

A woman is run over and critically injured. The driver appears at her bedside. There are encounters in life that take you somewhere you've never been and never meant to go.

"Lydia Stryk's compelling AN ACCIDENT ... is a fictionalized account of the recovery process the playwright herself went through after [an] accident seven years ago, but it's equally the drama of something Stryk was denied - coming to terms with the man who hit her. In an acting pas de deux ... Libby's recovery is mirrored by that man's wrestle with his guilt and responsibility. The sharply defined stages of her progress occur within the context of their wary, forthright, prickly, warm, confrontational and erotically charged interactions ... the spare, concentrated poetry of Stryk's language. [And] the degree to which [the character] makes us feel her physical struggle in our own bodies makes her sinuous progress ... our triumph, too." -Robert Hurwitt, San Francisco Chronicle

"... a visceral and emotional story about recovery, memories, and even the discovery of self. Introspective at times, and often seething with cynical humor, AN ACCIDENT is uncompromisingly human ... [The play] takes us on a roller-coaster of emotion. It's all here: guilt, sorrow, remorse, fear, shame, longing, desire ... Its truth cannot be denied. It's powerful and riveting theater." -Clinton Stark, StarkSilverCreek

"Lydia Stryk's play is a pounding two-person drama with utterly compelling pile drivers of empathy for the characters and surprisingly good humor ..." -Albert Goodwyn, San Francisco Examiner

"AN ACCIDENT has a harrowing sense of truth that is hard to shake. With her stark, poetic language, Stryk captures the frailty of life and the omnipresence of mortality in everyday activities ..." -Karen D'Souza, San Jose Mercury News