Theatre | July 1st, 2025
North Dakota play about mental health launches Midwest tour in August
By Alicia Underlee Nelson
A new one-act play inspired by patients buried in the Old Cemetery at the Jamestown State Hospital will tour festivals in Omaha, St. Louis and Indianapolis after a Grand Forks debut at Empire Arts Center on August 3. North Dakota playwright Kathleen Coudle-King wrote the play, titled “There’s Something I Must Tell You,” over the course of two years, funded in part by grants from the ND Council on the Arts.
It’s inspired by stories pulled from the hospital’s files from the 1800s and early 1900s. Although the play features voices from the past, Coudle-King hopes it will provide a way for contemporary audiences to discuss mental illness.
“There’s Something I Must Tell You” takes place over the course of a single night, when a modern researcher meets the ghosts of patients from the hospital’s history. They include a veteran of The Battle of The Little Bighorn and the Civil War, immigrants traumatized by relocation, women born without agency or civil rights and individuals who struggled with paranoid delusions, schizophrenia and the profound isolation of life on the prairie.
“While the dead can’t speak, I’ve done my best to share parts of their stories because they need to be told,” Coudle-King said in a press release. "I was careful to focus on those who have been deceased for at least a century.”
Theatre Without Walls will produce the show. The 2 p.m. matinee on August 3 at the Empire Arts Center in Grand Forks will serve as a fundraiser to offset travel costs to the three theatre festivals.
Tickets are available at the door for a suggested donation of $15 each. The box office opens at 1 p.m. The play is not appropriate for patrons under 15. A talk-back will follow the performance.
IF YOU GO:
“There’s Something I Must Tell You”
August 3, 2 p.m.
Empire Arts Center, 415 Demers Ave, Grand Forks
June 9th 2025
February 15th 2024
April 27th 2023
July 20th 2022
June 15th 2022
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