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Lost Lear is a moving and darkly comic remix of Shakespeare’s play told from the point of view of Joy, an elderly person with dementia. Joy is living in an old memory from her 30s, when she was rehearsing the title role in an avant-garde production of King Lear. Joy’s delicately maintained reality is upended by the arrival of her estranged son who, being cast as Cordelia, must find a way to speak his piece from within the limited role he’s given.

Described as “brilliantly conceived and executed” (Irish Examiner), Lost Lear is the creation of Irish theatre and filmmaker Dan Colley. Inspired by visiting his grandmother when she lived in a care home for people with dementia, Colley uses puppetry, projection, and live video effects to create Joy’s world, where layers of her past and present, fiction and reality, overlap and distort.

This remarkable play is a thought-provoking meditation on theater, artifice, and the possibility of communicating across the chasms between us.

This production runs 80 minutes.