Camryn Scherer and Kevin Collins
Demonstrate Real Stamina in
Duncan Macmillan's Lungs at JTP

Lungs by Duncan Macmillan is the kind of play that leaves a relationship exposed. There is nowhere for the couple to hide from each other, and nowhere for the audience to hide from the questions underneath them. In this production by The Justice Theater Project, co-directed by Olivia Glass Allen and Matara Hitchcock, a conversation about whether two people should have a child keeps widening into questions of climate fear, guilt, love, identity, responsibility, and the private need to believe that we are still good people. Part of what has allowed this play to continue resonating over the years is how clearly it captures a modern way of thinking, where love is rarely allowed to exist without being interrupted by information, consequences, ethics, and fear.

Camryn Scherer and Kevin Collins carried a demanding script with real stamina. Scherer gave the production much of its pulse. Her performance had a fast, anxious energy that could feel almost relentless, which suited a character whose mind rarely seems to rest. The room stayed full of thought, worry, and reaction, making the quieter moments register with even more force. When sadness replaced speed, the shift became sharper. Collins brought a steadier presence, though the play wisely refuses to treat calm as the same thing as understanding. Together Collins and Scherer created a relationship that felt affectionate, strained, funny, bruised, needy, and familiar in ways that could be difficult to watch precisely because they felt so recognizable.

What gives the play its weight is that its ideas never stay abstract for long. The couple is discussing carbon footprints, population, morality, and the future; but they are also dealing with sex, pregnancy, grief, resentment, class assumptions, loneliness, and the unequal reality of what a body must carry. That combination is where the writing lands. These are not people casually debating ethics from a distance. They are trying to make meaning while living inside the consequences of being human.

Camryn Scherer and Kevin Collins star in The Justice Theater Project's production of Duncan Macmillan's Lungs (photo by Naveed Moeed)

The post-show discussion last Sunday added something valuable to the experience. The conversation featuring Katrina Kuzyszyn-Jones, Psy.D, in partnership with the N.C. Psychological Association, brought language to the kind of distress that the play keeps circling. ECOSTRESS was described as a normal response to what is happening in the world, which shifted the frame in a useful way. Rather than reducing the couple's concerns to overreaction, that perspective pointed to a deeper exhaustion tied to overload, helplessness, responsibility, and the difficult search for morally clean choices in a world that rarely offers them.

That discussion also sharpened one of the production's strongest ideas, which is the repeated desire to be good. The couple keeps circling that idea in their own way. Good through thoughtfulness. Good through restraint. Good through awareness. Good through trying harder than other people. Yet the play keeps pressing on how unstable that word really is. People may want to do right; but they are pulling from different fears, values, beliefs, and definitions of responsibility. The conversation afterward made room for that complexity instead of flattening it. It opened up the possibility that sincere care can still become burdensome when the pressure of caring starts to consume everything else.

The staging suited the material well. The simplicity of the space kept attention on the emotional life of the piece. The white background, subtle blue lighting, and clean transitions between scenes gave the production a spare visual language that matched the story's interior quality. That restraint worked in its favor. It allowed atmosphere to come through pacing, silence, and emotional movement rather than heavy scenic explanation.

Camryn Scherer and Kevin Collins star in The Justice Theater Project's production of Duncan Macmillan's Lungs (photo by Naveed Moeed)

One of the strongest ideas running through this production is the cost of over-examination. Careful thought matters. Self-awareness matters. Trying to live responsibly matters. Yet the play also shows how constant analysis can drain joy, disturb intimacy, and leave people so busy measuring the morality of their lives that they struggle to fully live them. Thoughtfulness without balance begins to look less like wisdom and more like another form of suffering.

This production worked because it allowed contradiction to remain visible. The couple can be loving and cruel, insightful and arrogant, tender and selfish, sometimes within the same stretch of conversation. Nothing is smoothed over to make them easier to approve of. That honesty gives the evening its force. It asks the audience to sit with two people trying to love each other while carrying too much fear, too much information, and too much pressure to get life right.

Kevin Collins and Camryn Scherer star in The Justice Theater Project's production of Duncan Macmillan's Lungs (photo by Naveed Moeed)

Duncan Macmillan's LUNGS (In Person at 7:30 p.m. Friday and p.m. Saturday, and 3:30 p.m. Sunday, April 17-19 and 24-26), co-directed by Olivia Glass Allen and Matara Hitchcock and starring Kevin Collins and Camryn Scherer (The Justice Theater Project at the Church of the Nativity in Raleigh). TRAILER: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ0QsZRTqUI. DIGITAL PROGRAM: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/669acbfdf6794f7c20315491/t/69d901d1465e0c30e4106888/1775829457838/Lungs+Program.pdf. PRESENTER: https://www.thejusticetheaterproject.org/, https://www.facebook.com/Justicetheater, https://www.instagram.com/justicetheaterproject, https://x.com/JusticeTProject, and https://www.youtube.com/@thejusticetheaterproject5634. 2025-26 SEASON (The Heart Beats: Pulse, Breath, & Motion): https://www.thejusticetheaterproject.org/season-2526. VENUE: https://nativityonline.org/ and https://www.facebook.com/nativityonline. DIRECTIONS: https://www.google.com/maps/. LUNGS (2011 Washington, DC and 2019 West End play): https://www.concordtheatricals.com/p/46723/lungs and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lungs_(play). THE SCRIPT (excerpts): https://books.google.com/books. STUDY GUIDE (Utah Shakespeare Festival): . DUNCAN MACMILLAN (English playwright, screenwriter, and director): https://www.casarotto.co.uk/clients/duncan-macmillan, https://www.concordtheatricals.com/a/101044/duncan-macmillan, https://web.archive.org/web/20241213060250/http://www.iobdb.com/CreditableEntity/45376, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm7816594/, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_Macmillan_(playwright). WARNING: MMM cautions, "MMM." RELATED EVENTS: Click here and scroll down. TICKETS: $30.56 ($12.87 students and educators and $28.21 seniors and active-duty military personnel), plus taxes, except $28.21 per person for cast members and for groups of 10 or more. Click here to buy tickets. INFORMATION: 919-264-7089 or info@thejusticetheaterproject.org. PLEASE DONATE TO: The Justice Theater Project.

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