How much are you willing to give up to follow your passion? That’s the question at the heart of the drama “Time Stands Still,” opening the new season at Performance Network.

The story is current. When Sarah, an award-winning photojournalist, returns from Iraq after being injured in a bombing, her hunger to return to harm’s way causes a rift in her long-term relationship with James, her reporter ex-boyfriend who suffers from post-traumatic stress issues. When their friend Richard shows up with much younger girlfriend Mandy and an offers Sarah a cushy job at home in New York, she must decide whether to return to the front lines, where she can be a player on a much larger stage, or opt for a “normal” life.

“What are the sacrifices you are willing to make to have a safe, comfortable life?" wondered David Wolber, the Network’s artistic director. “In some ways that resonates with people, not necessarily through war, but in our world.

“Anybody that’s pursuing a passion that may not be the safest or most comfortable or most financial sustainable is making sacrifices. What are the sacrifices you are willing to make? What’s the balance of that? It’s a choice that many of us, at some point in our lives, are faced with.”

The production, directed by Kate Peckham, is the Michigan premiere of Pulitzer Prize-winner Donald Margulies’ 2010 Tony nominee for Best Play.

Although the play’s relationship-at-the-crossroads subject matter might sound like a bit of a downer, Peckham said that’s not the case.

“A lot of the humor comes from the juxtaposition of this new, younger girlfriend with these three kind of jaded New Yorker, upper-middle-class political people,” said Peckham. “You get the sense the three of them are this really tight clique, they are really tough with each other, they don’t mince any words … and in comes this young woman who at first glace is easy to underestimate, but she’s this breath of fresh air who had a positive view of the world. She wants to be happy and she can find the joy in life, whereas their job is to seek out the misery. So there’s a real contrast.”

“It’s easy to dismiss (Mandy) as light, fluffy, certainly not politically savvy,” Wolber added. “They end up kind of dismissing her in very funny ways, but they come around to understanding she’s much deeper than that.”

Not only is “Time Stands Still” about choice, it is also about love, Wolber said, “but not necessarily in a romantic, Disney-fied, glowing love story kind of way. … It’s a much deeper love story—really loving somebody and what that means, what you’re willing to put up with from somebody and what you are willing to sacrifice,” he said.

“The way this play examines love is you see Sarah and Jamie nine years into their relationship and you see Richard and Mandy at three months. You get to see the blush of new love and then also the relationship that’s been around the block,” Peckham added.

All four members of the cast—Suzi Regan, John Lepard, Hugh Maguire and Heidi Bennett—have appeared on the Network’s stage before. “All of these actors … they all have these powerful moments on stage and all four of them are a joy to watch and see them working together,” Wolber said.