Alzheimer’s Diary-Play Script

Alzheimer’s Diary is a poignant drama about a woman struggling with her mother’s illness. As the play begins, Lucinda reveals her concerns about her recent experience symptoms with memory loss and disorientation. Her daughter, Susan, tries to reassure her but as the story progresses to two years later, we see that Lucinda is deeper into the stages of her disease. This heartbreaking drama expertly reveals the emotional pain Lucinda experiences living with Alzheimer’s and Susan’s suffering as she slowly watches her mother and a part of herself disappear.

Steve Gold is a New York City-based playwright who has authored the full-length plays A Credit to His Race, Soldiers of Science, and Wyatt Earp’s Jewish Adventure; one-act plays include Bella Napoli, Alzheimer’s Diary, Wyatt Earp’s Jewish Adventure (one-act version) and Comfort Woman.

Excerpt from the play:

CAST OF CHARACTERS

SUSAN THAXTER: daughter
LUCINDA THAXTER: Susan’s mother

Time: The present
Place: New York City 3

ACT I

(The downstage center portion of the stage is lit, the rest is dark. The setting is a Manhattan townhouse, represented by a stage right wooden chair. An elegantly dressed sixty-ish woman sits in the chair and looks troubled. Several moments follow. She stands, crosses to center stage, and glances about the room. Her name is LUCINDA Thaxter.)

LUCINDA
(To no one in particular)
I think I… I think I have a problem.

(Returns to the chair and sits)

(A second woman enters upstage right: LUCINDA’s daughter SUSAN. In her forties, stylish dressed like her mother and with the nonchalant self-confidence of an aristocrat, as befits her pedigree. Upon entering, SUSAN proceeds to center stage)

SUSAN
Mother, are you ready?

LUCINDA
Ready? For what?

SUSAN
(Flippantly)
Are you serious? The Monet exhibition at the Met.

LUCINDA
I thought that was Thursday.

SUSAN
Today is Thursday.

LUCINDA
Yes, of course.

SUSAN
Come on, get ready.

LUCINDA
(Haltingly)
Before we leave… can I… speak to you?

SUSAN
About what?

LUCINDA
About… a number of things.

SUSAN
Such as…

(Pause; LUCINDA stands, moves to stage left)

LUCINDA
I was in my office this afternoon… I was proofreading a brief I had written and….

SUSAN
And what?

LUCINDA
And… I forgot where I was.

SUSAN
What do you mean?

LUCINDA
Just what I said: I forgot where I was.

SUSAN
(Glibly)
Really, Mother.

LUCINDA
I tell you, it happened to me

SUSAN
How can one forget where they are?

LUCINDA
I sat there, and everything went blank… I could see perfectly well… but I didn’t recognize what I was looking at.

SUSAN
It doesn’t make any sense—

LUCINDA
(Heartfelt)
Don’t you believe me?

SUSAN
I believe you—I’m sorry, Mother. So you went blank. What of it? I’m absent-minded myself.

LUCINDA
This is different.

SUSAN
I don’t think so—

LUCINDA
I do. It’s not the first time it’s happened, either.

SUSAN
It isn’t?

LUCINDA
No, it isn’t. (To stage right) I was in court… a week ago, making my summation before the jury… and it happened.

SUSAN
In the courtroom?

LUCINDA
In front of everybody… I didn’t know where I was, or who I was.

(pause)

SUSAN
Did anyone notice?