'MARIE CURIE' PLAYS FOR TERMINALLY ILL CHILDREN
An Evening with "Marie Curie: Rogue Scientist"
InlandEmpire.us ~ March 19, 2012
A special one-weekend engagement of “Marie Curie: Rogue Scientist” at Chino’s Seventh Street Theatre will raise funds for Kristie’s Foundation, a charity supporting critically and terminally ill children.
After losing her seven year old daughter Kristie to leukemia, Laurie Kotas has devoted herself to bettering the lives of children and their families during their final days. Kotas established Kristie’s Foundation, an Anaheim-based non-profit, which is now a leader in the nationwide movement to change the caregiving industry for terminally ill children. Kotas and her team are currently raising funds to build Kristie’s Place, a children’s hospice that will “offer families a special place where their child can get the medical support they need at the end of their child’s life, and still allow the families precious time together,” Kotas stated in a letter on the foundation’s website.
World-reknowned physicist Madame Marie Curie also had a heart for youth. As a young adult in Russian-occupied Poland, she risked imprisonment to teach peasant Polish children how to read. During WWI, she invented and operated mobile x-ray stations to aid young men wounded in battle.
“She experienced great loss as a young girl,” explained Rebecca Lynn Morales, star of the new one-woman play touring Southern California this Spring. “After Marie’s mother died, Marie adopted her selfless attitude. She used her gifts and calling to help others however she could.”
Curie’s benevolence is among the many themes explored in this dramatic presentation of the two-time Nobel Laureate’s arduous life.
“Hoping to find a valid medicinal use for radium, Marie worked until she was bedridden from radiation poisoning,” added writer-director Gabriel Morales. “She had such love for her community, she put herself in harm’s way to improve other’s lives, be it in the lab, classroom, or the front lines of war.”
Following Curie’s altruistic example, the production will benefit a charity in each of the tour’s locations. “This will be a mid-season fundraiser for Chino Community Theatre, co-producers of this stop of the tour,” explained Mr. Morales, “As well as a fundraiser for Kristie’s Foundation. Ten percent of every ticket sold, plus any additional donations collected on site, will better the lives of children and their families during the final days of their courageous fights.”
“Rogue Scientist” will play at 8 p.m. on Mar. 30 – 31, and 2:30 p.m. on Apr. 1, at Seventh Street Theatre, 13123 7th St. Chino.
Tickets are $15 general admission; $10 for seniors, students, children, military and groups of 10 or more.
For more information or to purchase tickets, please call (951) 269-1419 or visit www.mariecurieplay.com.
