Sick

NOMINEE, LA Weekly Award, Outstanding Playwriting

Play Details

Sick is a 90-minute play with no intermission.

Cast: 3 female, 3 male, 1 child
Genre: comedic drama
Keywords: hypochondria, mothers, leukemia, sex

Character Breakdown

PAMELA, a twenty-eight-year-old woman.
DAVID, her husband.
MICHAEL, their ten-year-old son.
BROWN, his doctor. Handsome, charming.
GARY, Pamela's brother.
CARLA, his wife.
JEANNIE, an addict, a sales clerk.

“When it comes to walking the fine line between humor and misery, Erik Patterson is an experienced high-wire artist. Patterson’s new play, Sick, is an incisive treatment of hypochondria and addiction that can be blisteringly funny…Subplots abound, and Patterson makes some sweetly salient points about the role of faith in the recovery process, as the people in Pamela’s orbit struggle with their own burdensome brain chemistry.”
– Los Angeles Times

Themes and additional keywords: health care, motherhood, parenthood, neglect, alcoholism, recovery, personal growth, bad parents, best new plays, playwrights, books for actors, acting for theater, monologues, female monologues, complicated female characters, scenes for acting class.