Lost Lear - (Modern Plays) by Dan Colley (Paperback)

About the Book

A moving and darkly comic remix of Shakespeare's play told from the point of view of Joy, a person with dementia, who is living in an old memory of rehearsing King Lear.

Book Synopsis

Winner of a Scotsman Fringe First Award 2025

You have to look at me now and tell me I'm
good, that this is good . . . That the bits of
you that I can't see are changed, charged,
churned by the bits of me that you can't see.

A moving and darkly comic remix of Shakespeare's play told from the point of view of Joy, a person with dementia, who is living in an old memory of rehearsing King Lear.

Joy's delicately maintained reality is upended by the arrival of her estranged son who,
being cast as Cordelia, must find a way to speak his piece from within the limited role he's given. Using puppetry, projection and live video effects, the audience are landed in Joy's world as layers of her past and present, fiction and reality, overlap and distort.

Lost Lear is a thought provoking meditation on theatre, artifice and the possibility of communicating across the chasms between us.

This edition of Lost Lear was published to coincide with the production at Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Festival Fringe in July 2025.

About the Author

Dan Colley is a Creative Director and Producer specialising in ensemble-devised theatre, young audiences theatre, comedy, community participation, and outdoor spectacle. He is a former Artistic Director of Collapsing Horse (who presented four shows at Dublin Fringe Festival) and is former. Co-Artistic Director of the Kilkenny Cat Laughs Festival. He was Producer/Facilitator of Dublin Fringe's birthday project "TWENTY FIRST". and is a former Fringe LAB resident artist. Dan trained as a Youth Theatre Facilitator with Youth Theatre Ireland. He is a member of the Project Arts Centre, is Theatre Artist in Residence with Riverbank Arts Centre, and is on the Expert Advisory Group of Creative Ireland: Pillar One.