Home >  Health & Science

Tuesday, January 21, 2003

By Cristina Rouvalis, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

When you think of compelling subjects for live theater, Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis don't come to mind.

Jordan Valinsky's play deals with his battle with Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. (Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette)

But Jordan Valinsky of Ross wrote what he knew, crafting a play out of the real-life drama of being a 9-year-old hospitalized for painful inflammatory diseases of the gastrointestinal tract.

In Act 1, Scene 2 of his play, "Silent Enemy," Valinsky is lying in a hospital bed, thin and lethargic, when he asks his mother, "Am I going to die, Mommy?"

Valinsky, now 13, wasn't expecting his play to win a prize in the Young Playwrights contest, sponsored by City Theatre. After all, a playwright who did an initial read told him that the story line wasn't exciting enough. Other students at Winchester Thurston School were writing action-packed scripts about magic and mystery, not about bad bowel diseases that cause abdominal pain and diarrhea.

Valinsky, the subject of a Post-Gazette story in 2000, wasn't even going to submit his play to the contest until his mother, Elaine, and a teacher convinced him to do so.

And to his great surprise and delight, the play was one of the four middle school winners. Of the 120 entries, three high school winners were also selected.

If writing a play about a chronic disease was cathartic, imagine what it will be like for the eighth-grader to see his autobiographical play brought to life by professional actors.

The short plays by Valinsky and other middle school students will be performed as school matinees Feb. 5-7. The public performances will be 7 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 7 and Saturday, Feb. 8 and 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 9.

Carlyn Aquiline, literary manager and dramaturg of City Theatre, said of Valinsky's play: "There was a lot of heart in it.

"It was so personal. He really put himself on the page," she said. "To go out on a limb like that, to open yourself up to people like that, that is a big risk."

Valinsky has revised the play with Aquiline to include more action. Most of the details are etched vividly into his memory.

"I wrote about the IVs, the nurses, talking about being scared. I added a little fake stuff, exaggerated on some of the pain and stuff -- but not much."

The ending may even incorporate the fact that as an 11-year-old, Valinsky raised $59,000 for the Western Pennsylvania/West Virginia chapter of the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation. In all, he has raised $80,000.

Valinsky's condition has improved in the past few years. He had stopped growing before he was diagnosed with both Crohn's and ulcerative colitis in 1999. Crohn's typically affects the small or large intestine. Ulcerative colitis strikes only the colon.

For the first 18 months of treatment, Valinsky was on a mix of medications that included steroids. He gained weight and his cheeks puffed out. His mother worried that his growth would be stunted, a side effect for some children with the illness.

But her son has grown 9 inches in the past two years, shooting up to 5 feet, 1 inch tall and 105 pounds. He is off steroids, and his puffy cheeks are gone, though he still takes 20 pills a day.

"I feel great," says Jordan, who is helping his mother set up a Crohn's and ulcerative colitis support group in the North Hills.

As for his on-stage drama, it has the same optimistic ending.

"It's not a sad play."