Capturing 'romantic dreams' in face of illness

About six years ago, five of playwright Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro's friends were suddenly diagnosed with beginning stages of Alzheimer's disease or dementia.

"What moved me so much was that they were so articulate at that point, so aware of what was going to happen," Alfaro says. "They all took up the challenge, they still had great romantic dreams."

Instead of immediately going through all the tests, one of them decided to take a cruise down the Amazon, she says.

For Alfaro, an established short story writer and veteran playwright, the tale of a woman who books a cruise down the Amazon instead of getting a doctor-ordered MRI could have worked in either form. She chose to make it a monologue, presented by the woman in question, a diva-like actress, whose relationship with her doting husband is challenged by the diagnosis.

Paired with "Haiku," a one-act family reunion drama by Kate Snodgrass, "Sailing Down the Amazon" opens tonight at Boston Playwrights' Theatre. Victoria Marsh directs both.

"Amazon" was developed and produced by Centastage and Underground Railway Theatre in the 2001 Women on Top Festival in Boston. It was also performed in the Women at Work Festival at the Vineyard Playhouse.

Monologues by feisty older women are increasingly common; witness Jodi Rothe's "Martha Mitchell Calling," which premiered at Shakespeare & Company last summer, starring Annette Miller.

Then there was "Dressed Up! Wigged Out! , " an evening of two one-acts by Leslie Dillen and Paula Plum , respectively, that ran last year at Boston Playwrights.

"There was a great burst of women playwrights 20 years ago," Alfaro says. "All these people are getting older. Most of us are writing plays that include older women. And with feminism, women have learned to take center stage, and what could be more center stage than a monologue?"

Runs Thursday through Jan. 21 at Boston Playwrights' Theatre. 617-661-7930. Suggested donation $15. Also plays Jan. 26-28 at the West End Theater, Gloucester.

A quarter-century ago, back when Emily Mann , now the artistic director of the McCarter Theatre Company in Princeton, was a young playwright, she interviewed a Marine veteran, his estranged wife, and his mistress about the effects of the Vietnam War on their lives. Out of those conversations came a play, "Still Life: A Documentary," which won six Obie Awards off-Broadway in 1981. AYTB Theatre Boston is presenting a local production starting tonight.

"Still Life" runs tonight through Jan. 20 at the Devanaughn Theatre. Tickets: $10-$15 (plus discounts for military personnel and their families), 866-811-4111, theatermania.com.

In Brian Polak's "Bombs and Manifestos," a lonely subway musician delivers a monologue detailing his decision to give up entertaining commuters as well as his fascination with the Unabomber's manifesto. Produced by the Alarm Clock Theatre Company. Runs tonight through Jan. 20 at the Black Box Theater, Boston Center for the Arts. Tickets: $15-$17.50, 617- 933-8600, bostontheatrescene.com.