Digital Extra: The Station Fire

01:00 AM EST on Thursday, February 19, 2004

BY BRYAN ROURKE
Journal Staff Writer

Nick O'Neill, the youngest victim of the Station fire, will be remembered tomorrow, the disaster's one-year anniversary, with performance art he created.

They Walk Among Us, a play O'Neill wrote about a year before his death at age 18, will be performed in the second half of a 7 p.m. show at the Stadium Theatre in Woonsocket. The first half will feature musical performances by O'Neill's family and friends.

The show, A Night of Angels, is a tribute to O'Neill. Proceeds will go to the Encore Repertory Company's Nicholas O'Neill Scholarship Fund.

Among the play's performers are O'Neill's father, David Kane, of North Providence; his brothers, David Kane, of North Providence, and Bill O'Neill, of Laguna Hills, Calif.; and his former girlfriend, Gabby Sherpa of Pawtucket.

Another brother, Chris O'Neill, a graduate student in theater education at Emerson College, is directing the play.

"It's amazing that he left behind a play, not only because the subject matter is a teenager who dies and comes back as a guardian angel and is clearly supposed to be Nick," Chris O'Neill says. "It expresses so clearly his reverence of life and his humor. I'm trying to honor that."

Nick O'Neill was an actor, comedian, playwright, singer and songwriter who composed more than 50 songs and recorded one CD before his death.

Nick wrote They Walk Among Us in response to the death of a 5-year-old girl who was involved with All Childrens Theatre, as he was.

"He wanted to express his feelings about how he would cope with loss, and how God and angels would cope," Chris O'Neill says. "He wanted people to have hope because there is divine in everything all around us."

The play, Chris O'Neill said, is a lot like the music his brother created for his rock band Shryne.

"It's irreverent and flippant, but at the same time it's reverent," he says. "It's a paradoxical thing."

The one-act, one-hour play involves seven speaking characters and an ensemble cast of roughly two dozen. Three guardian angels help people who are sad and prevent those who are suicidal from killing themselves.

"It has drama to it," Chris O'Neill says. "It's good theater. It builds and has crises as the right moments."

A Night of Angels is 7 p.m. tomorrow at the Stadium Theatre, in Monument Square, Main Street, Woonsocket. Tickets -- $12 orchestra, $10 balcony -- can be purchased at the door, online at www.stadiumtheatre.com, and by calling (401) 762-4545.