Jason Hedden Brings “Double Exposure” to the Stage

There comes a time in every parent’s life when he must entrust the care of his child to another. Babysitter, daycare worker, school teacher—eventually, we give up control.

If you’re like me—more maternal than anything else—this is a frightening proposition. No one will care for my baby the way I do.

As with most things, when looking for someone to share my most treasured treasure with, I use intuition. Sure, I observe character revealed in unguarded moments, but how I feel about the person—what I know without knowing anything is how I make my final decision.

Recently, I entrusted my novel, “Double Exposure,” to Jason Hedden, an actor, producer, director, and a professor at Gulf Coast Community College. This fruit of my loins (and other parts of me) that had gestated inside of me for so long, that I had carried and labored over and had given birth to, this truly beloved child of mine, I gave to Jason.

Jason took “Double Exposure,” a novel, and turned it into “Double Exposure,” an extraordinary theatrical experience. I was right to give Jason my book, and I couldn’t be happier with what he’s done with it.

Jason Hedden is a theatrical genius.

With an amazing vision from the very beginning, Jason carefully, thoughtfully, magnificently adapted a book into a play—a play that honors the book as much as another art form can, one that uses the strengths of theater to lift the story off the pages and set the characters and events twirling across the stage.


I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to watch Jason work, to witness firsthand his enormous effort, his respect for the book, his dedication and determination.

Each night I’ve attended rehearsals, I’ve had the experience of encountering people and places and events from my dreams. It’s a singular, surreal phenomenon.

“Double Exposure,” the theatrical experience, presents the book in a way that combines the best of the original text with the best of staged drama. Characters speak narration as well as dialog, bringing a literary quality to the play unlike any I’ve ever seen. The use of minimalist sets encourages, even forces, the audience to use its imagination in a way not unlike the book.

In the book, I mention that a prominent voice inside the main character’s head is that of his dead father’s. Genius Jason took that and used it to dramatize the experience—for the characters and the audience—by having the deceased father on stage talking to his son.

One more example of genius: In the book, the main character, a photographer, thinks about the greatest photographs ever taken, in an attempt to calm himself in a severely stressful situation. It would have been easy to project the iconic images onto a screen on the stage, but Jason staged them with actors—bringing them to life and preserving the poetic descriptions of them from the book.

Jason Hedden’s play, “Double Exposure,” has my highest recommendation. I hope you’ll see it. Of course, I hope you’ll read the book first, but if you decide not to, it wouldn’t bother me nearly as much as usual because of how much like reading a book Jason’s remarkable production really is.

(Play pictures by Jordan Marking)