McGinnis Directs A LIE OF THE MIND For ACT 1

Dave McGinnis directs Sam Shepard's A Lie of the Mind, opening this Friday night at Nashville's Darkhorse Theater, as ACT 1 continues its 2016-17 season.

Told in three acts set in snowy Montana, the action in Shepard's play alternates between two families after a horrifying incident of spousal abuse leaves all their lives altered until a final event at an isolated cabin.

The two families, one composed of Baylor (Phil Brady), Meg (Pat Rulon), Beth (Elizabeth Yancy), and Mike (Micah Buckley), with the other made up of Lorraine (Anastasia Zavaro), Sally (Katelyn Frierson), Frankie (Gabe Atchley), and Jake (Eric Butler) are connected by the marriage of Jake and Beth, whose beating and subsequent hospitalization at the hands of Jake initiates the beginning of the play. Exploring family dysfunction and the nature of love, the play follows Jake as he searches for meaning Beth's family struggles with her subsequent brain damage.

"A Lie of the Mind, was the Winner of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award and the Drama Desk Award. Filled with enormous vitality, and humor, the play explores the destinies of these two families, linked by marriage but set apart by jealousies and distrust, to probe into the human heart and the destructiveness which it can engender," according to a press release.

A Lie of the Mind runs November 11-26, at Darkhorse Theater, 4610 Charlotte Avenue. Thursday-Saturday performances begin at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday matinees begin at 2:30 p.m. Tickets are
available at www.act1online.com. The show contains both nudity and mature themes and carries an "R" rating, according to ACT 1's press release.

Poster art by David Arnold. Photography by Eric Ventress