Poster for A Lie of the Mind with production dates and times

A Lie Of

The Mind

Written by Sam Shepard

Directed by Elizabeth Carlin-Metz

A Lie of the Mind depicts two families shaken by the tectonic violence lurking beneath the glittering waters of the collective national myths depicting the American Dream, The Family, and The Individual. With aching loss and nostalgia for an America more real in memory than the flesh and now destroyed by the trickle down economics of pragmatism, money, and power, Americans need and yearn for one another, but fail one another with such great regularity that only possession, mistrust, betrayal, and competition are the real economics between us. All we have, Shepard has said, is “ideas that don’t speak to our inner self at all…”

February 23 – 26, 2011

7:30 pm

Harbach Theatre

two men talking on telephones, one at a payphone stage right and the other on a house phone stage left, a woman in a wheelchair is upstage with another man sitting next to her

a woman sitting in a wheelchair with her head wrapped in bandages, a man standing behind her with his hands on her shoulders

a man and a woman try to stop a fight between another man and a woman, the second man is attacking the second woman who is lying on the ground

a man laying on the ground unconscious in the arms of a woman, another man stands nearby

a man sitting on a couch talking to a woman who is standing near another man asleep in a chair, the woman is distraught

a man crouching near the floor talking to a woman perched on the edge of the footboard of a bed

a man wrapped in the American flag

a crouching man wrapped in the American flag clutches his hands and screams out in anguish

a man on his hands and knees in the foreground, another man holding the American flag crouches and points a shotgun at the first man, three others sit in the background unaware of what's happening

a woman sits in an old leather chair talking to another woman who is sitting on the floor and leaning on the chair

two women onstage separated by a good distance, woman stage right is standing in a spotlight, woman stage left is talking to the audience, projected image of fire on the backdrop

a man who is standing over another man tries to strangle him with an American flag

View Production Program (PDF)

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