About the Play:
The Mystery Play is a full-length drama by Josh
MacDonald. A supernatural chiller of rattling cupboards,
overnight séances, and spectral possessions, featuring a
crime-solving nun struggling with her dwindling faith – in which
the word "faith" can also mean a miracle beyond all logic –
while digging into her neighbours' lives.
The Mystery Play is a detective story, a ghost story, and a
memory play: a theatrical blending of Wit and The Woman In
Black. Sister Vivian Salter, a flinty, fifty-ish Catholic nun
forced into the role of amateur sleuth, has returned to her family
home in Parrsboro, N.S., in order to care for her ailing father. She
recounts her late-stage struggles with her own beliefs while also
detailing her father George's descent into Alzheimer's. In his
seventies, George is becoming prone to semi-violent outbursts, to
speaking with phantoms in the middle of the night, and to eerie
sleepwalking – all of which leave Salter exhausted and questioning
the existence of God's love. Then, into the adjoining suite next door
moves a young schoolteacher, Jennifer Craig, and her husband, Peter.
This newlywed couple seems perfect, and very much in love … until
they don't. By creeping attrition, Salter begins to suspect that
terrible spousal abuse is taking place other side of the wall, and,
despite herself, she gets drawn into mystery once more. But this time
it's a frightful mystery that sneaks increasingly closer... and
closer... to home.
The Mystery Play premiered in 2017 at Ship's Company
Theatre in Parrsboro, Nova Scotia.
Cast: 2 female, 2 male
What people say:
"MacDonald has crafted a
deliciously twisty 'what-if,' populated with compelling characters,
spectral thrills, and bluenose ghosts." — Ami McKay,
New York Times bestselling author of The Birth House
and The Witches of New York
"The writing is bright,
poetic, surprising, and funny. And to top it off, The
Mystery Play really is a mystery, as well as a ghost story
and a love story." — Wendy Lill, award-winning
author of The Glace Bay Miners' Museum and Memories of You
"MacDonald's The
Mystery Play has four vulnerable characters seeking
connection, but at its core is a rollicking good story – really
creepy, very mysterious, with unexpected twists to keep an audience
wondering. MacDonald beautifully marries his characters' authentic
hearts with an existential mystery." — Catherine Banks,
Governor General's Award–winning author of It Is Solved by
Walking and Bone Cage
About the Playwright:
Josh MacDonald is an award-winning Canadian playwright,
screenwriter, and teacher. He graduated from Concordia University in
Montréal where he specialized in theatre performance. He has written
for CBC Television and Radio, the National Film Board, the
Smithsonian Channel, Reelz, Blue Ant, and others. He has taught
creative writing at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD)
and the Fountain School of Performing Arts at Dalhousie University.
Also a professional actor for stage and screen, he is based in
Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.