Ward 6

Adapted from Anton Chekhov’s masterful novella, Ward No. 6, by Mom and Dad Artistic Director Joe Feliciano. Considered by many to be Chekhov’s crowning achievement in the short story form, it focuses on two men in a remote Russian village; one a lunatic committed for life in an asylum known only as Ward 6, the other his doctor.

Dr. Andrei Yefimich has finally found someone in his village with whom he can have meaningful discourse: Ivan Dmitrich, a disturbed yet brilliant man suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and confined as a patient in Ward 6. Ivan agonizingly experiences the pain and fear of the world closing in on him. Andrei willingly engages Ivan while retreating from a society in which he no longer has any interest. New diagnostics and treatments for the mentally ill collide with brutal feelings of isolation, loneliness, and helplessness as the two men react to the dysfunctional health care system in which both are entrenched.