cast_freud_1You’re about to meet two of the most exciting and influential intellects of the 20th century! Mark St. Germain encountered the possibility that C. S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud might have met in a book called The Question of God by Harvard Medical School psychiatrist Dr. Armand M. Nicholi Jr.. The 2002 book distills 37 years of spirited discussions with Nicholi’s students in the wildly popular seminar he had offered every year since 1967. (PBS adapted the book in a 2-part documentary mini-series in 2004).

The play you’ll see today premiered in 2009 at Mark St. Germain’s home theatre The Barrington Stage Company, and ran several months in New York where it won the Best Play Award from the Off Broadway Alliance. When my teaching colleagues Randy Ritz and Michael Peng proposed that I direct and design a production for them, I happily accepted after reading this remarkable script. At the Edmonton International Fringe Festival last summer, we enjoyed a sold-out run, were held over, and were nominated for three Sterling Awards. We are so pleased that Artistic Director Mark DuMez invited us to launch Chemainus Festival Theatre’s Studio Stage with this revival of our encounter with these two great characters!

Daniel vanHeyst