Dr. Penelope Douglas is an ex-forensic psychiatrist looking for a fresh start in a styling western boomtown, but on her first day practicing in her boutique suite, a young television writer hangs himself in her subway-tiled bathroom. A dissection of contemporary television drama through the eyes of the dead writer reveals to Penelope an unsettling connection between the forty-four-minute television hour and the disintegration of the human soul. But it isn’t until Penelope’s oil wife friend pronounces Penelope her unborn baby’s spiritual godmother that Dr. Douglas takes the dive into the uncharted waters of 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’? Drama, the long-awaited new play by the master of edgy dark humour, has all the answers.

Karen Hines is the author of Crawlspace, All the Little Animals I Have Eaten, Drama: Pilot Episode, Hello... Hello (A Romantic Satire) and The Pochsy Plays – all published by Coach House Books. Her plays and productions have been presented internationally and have won many production and literary nominations and awards including twice being finalist for the Governor General's Award for Drama. A Second City alumna, Karen has also appeared in numerous television and film productions and is the award-winning director of cult horror clowns Mump & Smoot. She lives in Calgary.

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'A very clever, cautionary play-with-epilogue about becoming the medium for what we watch on television and being what we consume ... a magnificent play.'

—Calgary Herald

'Hines is nothing if not an original.'

—Globe and Mail

'Some scenes in [Drama] are so electric that, if this were television instead of stage, you’d want to grab your remote and rewind so you could enjoy them instantly again.'

— Calgary Sun

'A funny, thought-provoking and devastating look at the lunacy and hypocrisy that we've all learned to live with in late 20th century America.'

—Rocky Mountain News (on The Pochsy Plays)

'Ingenious, acidic comedy.'

—Globe and Mail (on The Pochsy Plays)