Novenas for a Lost Hospital is a communal experience to remember, honor, re-imagine and celebrate St Vincent’s Hospital. Inspired by the caretakers and patients of St. Vincent's Hospital, and guided by Saint Elizabeth Seton, this unique event takes a 60-person audience on a journey from an enclosed garden to Rattlestick’s intimate West Village theater to the NYC AIDS Memorial Park.
Dramaturg Guy Lancaster writes, "St. Vincent's Hospital was started inside a rented house on East 13th Street in1849 during a cholera epidemic by four nuns from the Sisters of Charity. It was the first Catholic hospital in Manhattan. Survivors of disasters such as the sinking of the Titanic, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, and September 11 were treated at St. Vincent's after it moved to its eventual site on 7th Avenue in 1856. A devastating new plague, HIV/AIDS, would profoundly affect the institution and the surrounding neighborhood from the 1980s onwards as the hospital became a center for AIDS research and treatment. By the time St. Vincent's closed its doors on April 30, 2010, 3,500 employees had lost their jobs. The last Catholic hospital in Manhattan was replaced by a luxury condo development."
