FORT COLLINS – Northern Colorado's theatre community has lost a leading voice.
About a year and a half after her diagnosis of ovarian cancer, actor and director Deb Note-Farwell died Saturday morning at the age of 64.
Her husband and fellow actor Jonathan Farwell said their performances together on stage often resembled their real lives.
“We met doing a play – a play called 'Shadowlands', which we subsequently did twice more because we loved it so much,” the 86-year-old Farwell said. “It was the play that brought us together.”
"Shadowlands" is a play about the relationship between Irish academic and author C. S. Lewis and the American poet Joy Gresham. Not long after they married, she died of bone cancer.
“The parallel of that play and our life together – it just strikes me right now as remarkable,” Farwell said. “The play matched our sensibilities and our chemistry.”
Friend Wendy Ishii – the founder and artistic director of Bas Bleu Theatre in Fort Collins – convinced the couple to move to Colorado in 2005, where they performed "Shadowlands" again.
“It spoke to them the first time they did it – in a way I think that, that surprised, amazed and transformed them,” Ishii said. “To have it mirror what actually happened in real life makes it even more touching and profound and poignant.”
Farwell said during her final scene, his wife faced death with a smile – with no fear or regrets.
“It’s probably going to take some time to process,” Farwell said. “But I lost my first wife to breast cancer in 1990, and so I’ve had – I’ve had some rehearsal for this.”
A memorial service is tentatively planned for late September.
