“It’s… about family, about friendship, about survival, and about making each day count.”
Fabio Castro, a Senior at Saint Raphael’s, along with teacher and co-director Moira Carraher, work with the cast during rehersal of “The Year of the Beginning,” a play that recounts Castro’s journey of being diagnosed, treated, and surviving cancer.
3/4/2011 – Pawtucket, RI – Story courtesy of NBC News 10 in Providence – Fabio Castro is a teenager from Cranston. He attends Saint Raphael Academy in Pawtucket. But this story is not about where he’s from and where he goes. It’s about where he’s been — and the play he wrote to document it.
“It’s called ‘The Year of the Beginning,’ hence the name because it was the year that I got to start over, I guess,” Castro said.
Castro told us about the beginning of his life-changing journey, which began during his freshman year at Saint Ray’s.
“I was really tired, exhausted. I had bruising a lot of places. I was playing baseball at the time, and I got hit with the baseball and I realized I had a beach ball bruise the size of my leg,” Castro said. The diagnosis was leukemia. Hospitalizations and treatments followed. “And here I am, survived, and I’m happy,” Castro said.
Castro is the co-writer and director of the school play. His teacher and co-director, Moira Carraher, talked about Castro’s sophomore year.
“He was sharing a lot of the stories that he had, and I said, ‘You know there’s really something here,'” Carraher said.
“She’s like, ‘Let’s write a play.’ I was really iffy about it at first. I was like, ‘Uh, maybe.’ And then I started getting in to it. Alright, let’s write this play,” Castro said.
“When Fabio and I first sat down, he said to me, ‘You know Mrs. Carraher, I don’t want this to be a play about cancer. I want this to be a play about making each day count,'” Carraher said. “It’s really a play about family, about friendship, about survival, and about making each day count.”
“It was like really therapeutic for me. It was just flowing out of my body,” Castro said. “I can be a funny guy, and I can be a serious person. It has a lot of my personality in it.”
At a recent rehearsal, Castro said he had a bit of déjà vu.
“I could see myself and every time we went through the diagnosis scene, I was getting cringes and every time I was going on my Make a Wish trip I was happy because I was like I remember this time,” Castro said.
“All the memories it was bringing back. It was good, bad. And at the end, it was like amazing because I got to look at me and I got to look at the person portraying me and it was just perfect,” he said.
The play, “The Year of the Beginning,” is doubling as a fundraiser for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and The Tomorrow Fund, a local organization that Castro said helped him and his family emotionally and financially.
The performance is at Saint Raphael Academy at 7 p.m. on April 2. Tickets are $10. Call 401-723-8100 to reserve.
The play also will be the high school’s entry in the upcoming state drama festival.