The Time Between Words
June 27, 2025
By Emiliano Mejías
The story doesn’t begin when Zan gets suspended. Or arrested. Or hauled into court with his father standing beside him, angrier than he’s ever been.
The story begins with his punishment.
He walks into Dorothy’s room with a sentence to serve. An hour a day, reading aloud to a woman he doesn’t know, who doesn’t look like she needs or wants anything from him.
And yet, she waits.
In Dorothy’s Dictionary, the second show in Florida Studio Theatre’s Summer Mainstage, playwright E.M. Lewis sets two strangers in a room and lets their story unfold one word at a time.
He’s a high school student serving time. She’s a librarian with declining health and a lifetime of stories. But as the books open, so do they—revealing grief, humor, anger, vulnerability, and, above all, the possibility of change.
“The simplicity of it is what struck me first,” says Ethan Jack Haberfield, who plays Zan in his FST debut. “Two people, one room, no big spectacle—just real conversations that slowly sneak up on you. It’s spare, but every word matters.”
Those words become the foundation of something bigger. Through dialogue that feels both immediate and poetic, Dorothy’s Dictionary explores what happens when we truly listen: not just with our ears, but with our whole selves.
Alice M. Gatling, who plays Dorothy after last being seen in Black Pearl Sings!, felt an instant kinship with her character. “She reminded me of all the librarians that took a fancy to me and opened doors for me through books,” she shares. “There is so much to be gained in sharing with each other.”
A teacher herself, Gatling brings to the role a deep understanding of what it means to mentor young people. “Students like Zan are one of the reasons I continue to teach.”
Through dialogue and a shared pile of books, Dorothy and Zan begin to learn each other’s rhythms. They challenge each other. They surprise each other. And through it all, they listen.
“Even the most closed-off people usually have a lot more to say—once someone finally listens,” says Haberfield. “And connection doesn’t always come through grand gestures. Sometimes it’s just showing up.”
For director Kate Alexander, that quiet power is exactly what makes the play resonate. “In the most unlikely of places, one finds redemption. When all seems lost—even in ourselves—we meet ‘the stranger,’” she says. “This play is about two people who are seemingly worlds apart and how they find common ground through the written word.”
In a room with no spectacle, no distractions—just books, silence, and two people willing to show up—the story unfolds. Slowly, and then all at once.
What began as a sentence becomes something else: not time to serve, but time to share. And in the pauses between chapters, in the time between words, something unexpected takes root.