Synopsis.
Justice is a full-length drama set inside the Program, a school that looks like a yoga studio crossed with an arts and crafts store. A banner over the classrooms reads We Shape Those Minds. The students, called Patrons, are never heard. Their contributions arrive in silence, acknowledged and paraphrased by the adults, and the audience learns to read the room through what the Guides repeat back.
K is a bubbly, indefatigable young Guide teaching the middle school ages, fully invested and happy to be exactly where she believes she should be. D is one of the Program's founders, calm and collected as a seasoned therapist, teaching the youngest children. When the play opens, D is not quite herself. The morning roll call runs on chosen signifiers instead of names, and that detail is the whole play in miniature: everyone inside the Program has traded a name for a letter.
Over six scenes the doubt spreads. J, another Guide, watches and waits. What the Program has taken becomes visible one letter at a time: J was Aaron. K was Jennifer. D is Dee, like D-E-E. The play ends with K and D choosing each other and running, and with J stepping smoothly into the space they leave behind, greeting the Patrons as if nothing happened. The door out exists. The play is about who takes it and who becomes the room.
Thematic Core.
Justice is a play about what institutions do to names. The Program speaks entirely in the language of care, and the horror is that the softness works. Nobody is dragged anywhere. People are soothed into letters. The question the play asks is not whether the system is kind. It is what the kindness costs, and who is still a person when the banner comes down.
Tone and Register.
Quiet dystopia played gently. The comedy lives in the soothing institutional language and the silent students' bracketed contributions. The dread accumulates through calm voices and environmental music. Nothing on stage raises its voice until it matters.
Character Breakdown.
Four roles.
KA young woman. Bubbly, indefatigable, a true believer teaching the middle school ages. The play's engine of warmth, and the first to choose a person over the Program. She was Jennifer.
DA woman with the gravitas of a founder and the bedside manner of a seasoned therapist. Teaches the youngest children. Her crisis of faith opens the play and her choice ends it. She is Dee, like D-E-E.
JA Guide. Watchful, fluent in the Program's language, and the play's coldest mirror. He was Aaron. His final scene is the reason the play ends in silence rather than applause.
BA fourth voice inside the Program.
Production Requirements.
Split scene staging: two classrooms side by side, dressed like a yoga studio mixed with an arts and crafts store, under the banner We Shape Those Minds. Four actors. Calming environmental music. The students are never cast and never heard; their lines appear in the script in brackets and are played entirely through the Guides' responses. The script uses a slash to mark overlapping dialogue.
Rights.
Justice is a full-length drama, second draft, 2016. The playwright retains all rights. For the complete manuscript: mikebouchard@gmail.com