Rooms of Experience, Act 3

By Steffany Sommers

Starring Patty McCormack as Ada Wells

and Dan Lauria as DA Harvey Davis

The trial begins.

Detective Curtis takes the stand.

Gina tells the jury about the woman who spent sixty-five years caring for her son.

Alexis puts Ada on the stand.

Ada does not ask for forgiveness.

She asks them to understand.

Dana answers with the law.

Alexis answers with lived experience.

An expert insists Teddy could have adapted to a new home.

Ada insists they never knew her son.

Then the case goes to the jury.

But Dana’s real judgment comes somewhere else.

The blue envelopes.

The hospital.

The daughter she left behind.

Dana finally tells Ada the truth.

Her baby was born with Down syndrome.

Dana walked out of the hospital.

She never went back.

And she prosecuted Ada because she needed to believe that leaving her own child had been the right choice.

Ada does not condemn her.

She reminds Dana that not every choice is permanent.

Then she asks the question Dana has avoided for seven years.

What is her daughter’s name?

Maddie.

Before the jury can deliver its verdict, Ada dies quietly in her garden.

In the hollowed-out place where Teddy used to lie.

The case is dismissed.

But the question remains.

At Ada’s funeral, Alexis gives Dana one final letter.

Dana opens it.

She finds Christopher.

She finds Maddie.

And for the first time since that day at the hospital, Dana moves toward her daughter instead of away.

By the end of Act Three, the law never delivers a verdict.

Dana makes a different choice.

Starring Academy Award nominee Patty McCormack (The Bad Seed) as Ada Wells

with Dan Lauria (The Wonder Years) as DA Harvey Davis

Craig Parker (The Lord of the Rings) as Detective Curtis

Nicholas Gonzalez (The Good Doctor) as Carter

Nora Zehetner (Heroes, Everwood) as Rebecca

Alyshia Ochse as Dana Jeffries

Candice Coke as Alexis Martinez

Eileen Grubba as Gina Gordon

Alain Uy as Ethan

and narrated by Sarah Elmaleh

Table Read is executive produced by Jack Levy, Mark Knell, and Shaan Sharma. A Manifest Media production.