The following article appeared in Actors Theatre's subscriber newsletter prior to the 1995 Humana Festival

CHARTING OUR VITAL SIGNS
After a typical day at her clinic, Kate, a physician, asks her stay-at-home husband Mark about their young son, "What sort of day did our boy have?" Given the experiences we’ve seen her endure, the question is loaded, one full of hope in a moment of dispair. July 7, 1994 captures, says playwright Donald Margulies, "the essence of this one day and how it may or may not impact the days which follow."

July 7, 1994 begins for Kate with a description of a horrifying dream. Images of their son in distress flash through Kate’s mind. She wonders if television, especially the recent round-the-clock coverage of the Simpson murder trial, is poisoning their dreams. And, despite her objections to it, the television remains in the background throughout her day. With great trepidation and mounting anxiety, but committed to her practice and those it serves, she leaves home.

At the clinic, Kate treats four very challenging patients. Despite her efforts to understand and comfort them, she finds herself at a loss. Her role as physician seems to have expanded to include social work, psychiatry, counseling and general emotional maintenance. Whether the patient is a mother bruised by domestic violence, a troubled man refusing to take his lithium, a young mother dying of AIDS or a heartbroken Hispanic woman, Kate struggles to offer hope where there seems to be none.

Eerie reminders of her husband’s dream meet Kate at every turn, as well as an ever-increasing awareness of the disturbance and fear in the world. Señora Soto tells of a crushing pain in her heart, then of blood pouring out of her mouth like a river, all because she is separated from her children. Ms. Pike, battered but in denial, describes O.J. as "out of control… full of rage, pure and simple." Mr. Caridi accuses Kate of lacking compassion, a vital aspect of her profession, when she refuses his unwanted advances. And Paula insists that her time is valuable, something Kate believes she had acknowledged, but perhaps she hadn’t.

With such chaos around her, and her grasp of it progressively slipping, it’s remarkable that Kate even manages to find any order at all, let alone time to stop and assess her contributions. As Margulies points out, "How do you treat someone like Señora Soto with a thermometer? Doctors don’t have the answers. Nobody does. I want to try and ask people to stop and see the lonely plight of so many." July 7, 1994 demands that we, like Kate, stop and do so, lest we ignore or deny the vital signs of life happening just outside our door.

— Michele Volansky