A Semblance of Wholeness
(Semblance of Madness / The Whole Shebang)
by
John H. Newmeir / Rich Orloff
SYNOPSIS
Semblance of Madness:
A powerful and challenging drama set in the women’s ward of a psychiatric hospital. Three women meet for a therapeutic drama session and each claim, apparently truthfully, that she is a mental health professional and that the other two women are patients.
One of the three is suspected of committing a gruesome murder…but which one? In this unusual and unsettling ‘whodunnit’ the extremes of human emotions spill over as conflict heightens and the truth eventually comes out.
How much of this unpredictable and sinister behaviour is a manifestation of mental illness and how much is acting? Are we really witnessing madness or merely a ‘Semblance of Madness’?
The Whole Shebang:
This play takes a light-hearted look at the origins of man and the human predicament and asks the question, “What if the entire universe was just some nerd's science project?”
In a classroom in a dimension far beyond ours, a student striving for a “Master of the Universe” degree gives an oral presentation on an unusual thesis – the creation of the heavens and the earth. Two professors and a dean interrogate the student and his two visual aids, a “typical” man and woman.
Although a light comedy, 'The Whole Shebang' shows us that despite all of our flaws, there is really something special about each of us.
DIRECTOR
Stephen Brindley (Sembelance of Madness)
Dimitri Aivaliotis (The Whole Shebang)