What if one brief meeting had been allowed to deepen?
In this imagined encounter between Carl Sandburg and Marilyn Monroe, the playwright moves beyond the historical record into a space of quiet possibility-where public image gives way to something more searching, more exact: clarity.
Set in the softening light of late afternoon, The Nearness of Light unfolds as an intimate conversation about identity, perception, and the distance between who we are and how we are seen. As the dialogue deepens, the familiar image begins to loosen. Monroe emerges not as icon, but as a mind-attentive, questioning, and inwardly alive-while Sandburg listens without intrusion, making space for what might finally be said.
What takes shape is not a reconstruction, but a quiet restoration: a movement from surface to interior, from performance to presence, from visibility to truth.
Spare, lyrical, and contemplative, this work invites readers into a moment of stillness-where performance falls away and something more enduring comes into view, and where, perhaps, something real may at last be spoken and heard.
