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list price: $16.95
edition:Paperback
also available: eBook
category: Drama
published: Oct 2018
ISBN:9781772012163
publisher: Talonbooks

The Mystery Play

by Josh MacDonald

tagged: canadian, supernatural
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 Ship’s Company Theatre in Parrsboro, Nova Scotia.

In The Mystery Play, Salter 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 next door, and, despite herself, she gets drawn into mystery once more. But this time it’s a fearsome mystery that sneaks increasingly closer and closer to home.

The Mystery Play, a supernatural chiller of rattling cupboards, overnight séances, and spectral possessions, reveals a new definition of “mystery” – one derived from the Mystery Plays of sister Salter’s dwindling faith – in which the word can also mean a miracle beyond all logic.

About the Author
Josh MacDonald is a playwright, screenwriter, actor, and teacher. His three plays published by Talonbooks, Halo, Whereverville, and The Mystery Play are curriculum titles at Canadian high schools and universities. Halo has been produced around North America and has been adapted into the feature film Faith, Fraud & Minimum Wage (eOne Entertainment), for which Josh wrote the screenplay. Josh is also the writer of the horror feature The Corridor (IFC Films; D Films), which played around the world and won the “Next Wave” Award for Best Screenplay at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas. He is the writer-director of the short film Game, which has over a million views online. Josh 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. Josh is married to actor Francine Deschepper.
Contributor Notes

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 Josh’s original play Halo, a stage piece commissioned, produced, and toured by Two Planks and A Passion Theatre during MacDonald’s time as the company’s 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 Centre’s 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.

Editorial Review

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

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