The Mystery Play

(Paperback)

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Description

The Mystery Play is a detective story, a ghost story, and a memory play: a theatrical blending of Wit and The Woman In Black. Though fully self-contained, The Mystery Play is also the second in a trilogy about crime-solving Sister Vivian Salter, a flinty, fifty-ish Catholic nun forced into the role of amateur sleuth. Each story in her trilogy was penned by a different playwright and commissioned by Ships Company Theatre in Parrsboro, Nova Scotia.

, Salter recounts her late-stage struggles with her own beliefs while also detailing her father Georges descent into Alzheimers. 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 Gods 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 dont. By creeping attrition, Salter begins to suspect that terrible spousal abuse is taking place next door, and, despite herself, she gets drawn into mystery once more. But this time its a fearsome mystery that sneaks increasingly closer and closer to home.

, a supernatural chiller of rattling cupboards, overnight sances, and spectral possessions, reveals a new definition of mystery one derived from the Mystery Plays of sister Salters dwindling faith in which the word can also mean a miracle beyond all logic.

Reviews

Praise for earlier work:
Appearances are deceptive [in Whereverville], no less in the plays form than in its plotting. A well-crafted and multilayered script.
University of Toronto Quarterly

Author Bio

Josh MacDonald is a writer and actor living in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. His comedy-drama feature film Faith, Fraud & Minimum Wage was released by Seville Pictures/ Entertainment One in 2010. The screenplay for Faith, Fraud & Minimum Wage was based upon Joshs original play Halo, a stage piece commissioned, produced, and toured by Two Planks and A Passion Theatre during MacDonalds time as the companys Writer-In-Residence (2001). Halo has since been produced by many theatre companies across North America, from Nova Scotia to British Columbia, California to New York state. Published by Talonbooks, Halo is a curriculum title in various high schools and universities in Canada. Whereverville was also commissioned and toured by Two Planks and a Passion Theatre and shortlisted for the National Arts Centres On The Verge Festival, and is also published by Talonbooks.

Macdonald also works as a professional story editor, actor, and teacher. Recently, he was the playwriting instructor in the theatre department of Dalhousie University in Halifax.