Wabeno Area Players to offer Written Off screening

Please join the Wabeno Area Players on Thursday, April 4th, 2019 for a community screening of the documentary “Written Off”. The event will be held at the Nancy Volk Auditorium in the Wabeno Area High School. The Forest County Healthy Department will also offer a Mock Teen Bedroom display beginning at 5:30 p.m. for those 18 and older. A discussion panel will be available after the screening. The documentary is free and open to the entire community.

The film tells a gripping tale and challenges stigma. In 2016 more Americans died from overdoses than in the entire Vietnam War conflict. And yet those new casualties are rarely considered victims of disease.

The film chronicles the life of Matthew Edwards, a Crandon High School graduate, whose addiction to opioids began at age 15, after being prescribed pain medicine for minor surgery. His grippingly honest writing reveals the secrets he tried so hard to conceal throughout a decade long struggle to escape addiction. Matthew’s mother, Jane Funk, currently a teacher at Crandon High School, published the book What I Couldn’t Tell you: one Man’s Struggle with Opioid Addiction in June of 2017 and worked with filmmakers Molly Hermann and Rob Lyall on the “Written Off” documentary.