Jimmy sits in front of a campfire deep in the Rocky Mountains of Montana, his arms wrapped tightly around his big brother Stephen. The older man wrestles to break free but Jimmy’s hold is just too strong.

Stephen flips and flops in his brother’s arms like a fish fighting for the freedom to return to the cool comfort of the river. The hook, however, is buried too deeply in his mouth, the line too taut and, in the end, Jimmy can not reel in his beloved brother and save him from the addiction that rules Stephen’s life.

“UltraLight” is the one-act play that tells the brothers’ story. It will be performed this weekend at the Bangor Opera House and next week at The Grand Auditorium in Ellsworth. Written by Michael Gorman of Palermo, it is based on his relationship with his older brother, who died of a heroin overdose in 1998 at the age of 39.

A commercial fisherman in Gloucester, Mass., Kevin Gorman lived a lot longer than the opiate-addicted Hancock County residents Barbara Royal sees at the Open Door Recovery Center in Ellsworth. When Royal, the center’s director, heard that “UltraLight” would be performed in Portland and Bangor, she “begged to get it here.”

She said that a play can show the effects of addiction on users’ and their family members better than a lecture or panel discussion.

“It’s almost like sitting back in someone’s living room,” she said of seeing the play. “It’s participating without being involved. And, it was written by someone with knowledge and insight based on a real-life story. This is not a made-up version. This is the real stuff.”

The effects of opiate addiction have hit Maine communities hard. In the past year, four people – three of them in their late teens or early 20s – have died of overdoses in Hancock County. The productions in Ellsworth will be dedicated to Cooper King, who died of a drug overdose in May at the age of 21. His sister Lass King, along with Royal, law enforcement officials and others, will participate in panel discussions after the two shows at the Grand. Royal said Wednesday that the community has rallied around the production to provide lodging and meals for the crew and actors. The Masonic Hall has donated office and kitchen space. Union Trust Company has raised funds to provide free tickets to middle and high school students throughout the county.

That kind of grass-roots response did not happen in Portland, and so far, hasn’t occurred in Bangor, according to Gorman’s wife, Bridget Besaw Gorman, who is producing the tour. Production costs run about $15,000 per location, she said, and although sponsors have provided major support in those cities, donations still are needed to keep the show out of the red.

Royal offered a theory about why the Ellsworth community has come forward to support “UltraLight.”

“My instinct tells me it’s because we lost three young people [in Hancock County] in less than a year, all within months of each other,” she said. “These are all young individuals who had everything to live for. That’s been a huge wakeup call and it left a lot of people in the community with a sense of hopelessness. This play has allowed them to go into action. It’s a thing they can latch onto and do something.”

Hancock County Sheriff William Clark, who is advocating for the creation of a countywide drug enforcement task force, took on the job of seeing that the cast and crew are fed while in Ellsworth. Trustees at the jail will serve lunches and area churches and staff at the district attorney’s office will provide dinners, he said. A local cafe has donated breakfasts.

Clark said Wednesday that he has no statistics on the number of people in the county who are using heroin, oxycodone and other opiates because “nobody’s working on it” exclusively.

“Hancock County’s no better off than Washington or Penobscot,” he said. “Probation and parole officers tell me that 80 percent of the people on probation have some kind of addiction. Every time we turn around, it’s bad news.”

Much smaller communities in Maine aren’t immune to the effects of opiate addiction either. Asa Pingree, 21,who has a small part in “UltraLight,” grew up on North Haven, an island community with a population of 400 year-round residents. In March, one of his classmates died from an overdose. The news rocked the tight-knit community.

That scenario is all too familiar to Royal.

“Most kids we see at the center here started using alcohol between the ages of 10 and 12, then moved on to pot, pills and opiates,” she said. “By their late teens, they’re into OxyContin and heroin, so that by their early 20s they’re done, its over.

“What typically takes 10 to 15 years with alcohol addiction, happens in a much shorter amount of time. Part of what makes this so serious is this epidemic is happening to a population that should be learning, having fun, having great times with their families. Instead, they’re hiding out, snorting, shooting up, putting their childhood on the back burner.”

Pingree, whose mother, Chellie Pingree, served in the Legislature for years and whose sister Hannah is now a state representative from Portland, said last week that the play has given him a way to deal with his friend’s death. In a similar way, writing the play gave Gorman an avenue for coping with his brother’s addiction and death.

He wrote the first draft of “UltraLight” 15 years ago. The playwright has restructured it many times since, and overhauled it again after his brother died.

“UltraLight,” which refers to a lightweight rod that anglers favor for catching trout, debuted three years ago at La MaMa Experimental Theater Club in New York where Gorman was the playwright-in- residence.

“Writing the play has given me the opportunity for forgiveness, understanding and a chance to say goodbye to my brother – a chance I never had in real life,” said Gorman in his artist statement. “Performing it in Maine will, I hope, provide a similar opportunity for many in the communities of Portland, Bangor and Ellsworth.”

In Bangor, “UltraLight,” which opens Friday at the Bangor Opera House, is being partially funded by Acadia Hospital.

“The play fits in with Acadia Hospital’s mission to educate [the community] about the opiate addiction problem in Bangor,” said Alan Comeau, Acadia’s director of community relations. “Our hope is that a cross section of people – those in recovery, ordinary people and regular theatergoers – will attend the play and let the power of the theater give them a greater understanding and raise their awareness about opiate addiction in the community.”

Acadia also will sponsor “Faces of Recovery,” a traveling exhibit of portraits of recovering addicts by Besaw Gorman, a former Bangor Daily News photographer. She gained access to her subjects through the Maine Alliance for Addiction Recovery, a statewide coalition, which advocates for improving substance abuse services.

Bruce Curran, MAAR’s director, said that when Besaw Gorman gave him “UltraLight” to read last March, he knew it “would work as an event for National Recovery Month, which is September.”

“My first thought was that Michael understands the struggle of addictions,” he said. “He understands the family point of view and he understands the addict’s point of view.”

The play is a production of The Forty Hour Club, established by the Gormans “to create a social and political forum around the play” to encourage discussion about addiction.

That is a discussion desperately needed in every Maine community, according to Royal.

“UltraLight” will be performed at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Bangor Opera House and at 8 p.m. Friday, Sept. 19, and Saturday, Sept. 20, at The Grand Auditorium in Ellsworth. For tickets in Bangor, call 942-3333 or in Ellsworth, 667-9500.