DRAMA: The Pilot Episodes

Dr. Penelope Douglas is an ex-forensic scientist looking for a fresh start in a styling western boomtown, but on her first day practising in her boutique suite, a young television writer takes his life in her subway-tiled bathroom.
A dissection of contemporary television drama through the dead writer’s eyes reveals to Penelope an unsettling connection between the forty-four-minute television hour and the disintegration of the human soul.
It isn’t until Penelope’s pregnant oil wife friend pronounces Penelope her baby’s spiritual godmother that Dr. Douglas takes a dive into her own unconscious to break the spell that has the frontier in its filthy grip.
Will Dr. Douglas be able to find heart in this wild new landscape?
Will she have to smudge her lipstick to ‘cowboy up’?

A contemporary western psycho-dramedy. A podcast in four parts.


Created and Written by Karen Hines
Sound Design and Music Composed and Performed by Dewi Wood
Directed by Blake Brooker

Featuring the vocal talents of

Denise Clarke, Andy Curtis, Ali DeRegt, Karen Hines,
Jamie Konchak, Allison Lynch, Amy Sawka, Mike Tan
and
Daniela Vlaskalic as Doctor Penelope Douglas MD, PhD.

***

PRODUCTION HISTORY AND PRESS

DRAMA was first presented live onstage at Alberta Theatre Projects’ Playrites Festival, 2012, Directed by Blake Brooker with Dramaturgy by Vicki Stroich. The show featured Lindsay Burns, Mabelle Carvajal, Christian Goutsis, Alana Hawley, Allan Morgan –with Amy Sawka as Fyg, and Daniela Vlaskalic as Doctor Penelope Douglas, MD, PhD.

Drama won numerous prizes and citations including Calgary Critic’s Award, The Betty Mitchell Award, and finalist for Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama.

DRAMA: Pilot Episode – in book form – is currently in its third printing by Toronto’s Coach House Books.

From the Press:

  • Remarkable… We go from chic to cheek, from satire to melodrama, from soul of the mind to spirit in the veins ... as we are moved by playwright Hines through a very clever, cautionary play-with-epilogue about becoming the medium for what we watch on television ... The cast, directed by Blake Brooker, is terrific — clear and precise, their portrayals strike a balance between the real and the unreal… [There is a] tension in Drama between the animate spirit of the land in the past and the inanimate souls of the dead who live in the present — at the heart of a magnificent play.

    Bob Clark, Calgary Herald

  • Hines is nothing if not an original – a twisted and consistently quotable satire.

    Kelly Nestruck, Globe & Mail

  • Hines is superb at depicting in a few words the despair of people who feel forced to live lives bereft of meaning ... I can't imagine a person in the Western world who would be left untouched by the great drama of souls Hines creates here.

    Alex Rettie, Alberta Views