Play a Day: Her Own Devices

Lindsay Adams

Seven plays in seven days! Life swims past you when you never leave your house. For Tuesday, I read Her Own Devices by Lindsay Adams and available at New Play Exchange.

An appropriate read for these peculiar times. A pre-adolescent girl has been captive her entire life, held as a test subject ostensibly for her own safety. She has an autoimmune disorder, and absoluely any pathogens will kill her.

Or at least, that is the premise. That is what we are told. That is what any of us are told. What if COVID-19 is a myth and everything we have been told is a lie for some other purpose. Everyone staying indoors, no longer working, forbidden - by the state - from meeting in groups.

It's a good thing we have faith in our government instutitions. But I digress. Or do I?

The protagonist, the girl Madeline, would be inscrutible except we are let into her thoughts by way of her imaginary friend, and Adams has created a mind at once expanded and crippled by a lifetime of isolation and increasing mistrust by her doctors/captors.

This is a search for what is true and what is not, and also questions whether our inherent free-will is something we should really be happy about.

Who should I read tomorrow?