Blue/Orange, Joe Penhall

Featuring great, persuasive acting, the play explores the problem of interpretation and transmission of ideas, especially when those ideas are expressed by individuals not "trained" in the presupposition and jargon of the field from which those ideas are associated.
At the same time the play is about a slick-talking, manipulative bureaucrat, it also manipulates postmodern concepts to keep the audience's floor unstable. Here, language is not for seeking an understanding of the work and its ambiguity, but about gaining and maintaining control. The goal is power not truth. Thus, characters make truthful statements, even truthful arguments, that are not at the service of truth. By asking such questions as "How should we understand mental illness?" "How can mental health professionals talk to patients?" "How do we distinguish between patient and professional?"--the play becomes a fascinating examination of important postmodern concerns: the intersection of ethnocentricity with racism, and cultural/mental/intellectual norms.