An assignment at the Kennedy Center Playwriting Intensive in 2018 led me to write a monologue based on a photograph of a flooded barn. I grew up on a farm, so I knew I could draw from my experience. I asked myself, “What is the worst thing that could have happened in this flooded barn?” As a parent, my answer was instant. Questions swirled and eddied from what I wrote. A play slowly emerged about how the rituals and language surrounding death are steeped in religion, and how a family whose members holding opposing beliefs could find solace after such an unimaginable loss. Death is an inescapable part of life. Each of us grieves in our own way and our own time. I hope this play opens the door for conversations about the biases we hold, the assumptions we make, and how to work through them and to meet people where they are with respect and dignity, in their grief and in their lives. 

— Crystal Adaway, Playwright,To Be Still

Pipeline Playwrights is the only theater collaborative in the Washington, DC area dedicated to producing new plays by women playwrights. A 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation founded by women playwrights, Pipeline seeks to close the theatre gender gap one play, one reading, one production at a time. The members of Pipeline Playwrights are Crystal Adaway, Nicole Burton, Patricia Connelly, Jean Koppen, and Ann Timmons. Find out more at https://www.pipelineplaywrights.org