Evolution is a tragic-comic solo play, written and performed by Patricia Buckley and directed by Leslie Noble. It tells the story of two estranged sisters and their mother wrestling with a mysterious illness, and forges an unlikely connection between Social Darwinism, family dynamics, and the evolution of whales.

Pammy is an A-list paleontologist and expert on the evolution of marine mammals. Minnie, the unbalanced family failure, looks in the mirror and thinks maybe she’s turning into a fish. Mother is a nervous-wreck warrior, presiding over life’s battles like Joan of Arc with a crochet hook. So it is, until Minnie has yet another dangerous “episode” which brings both sisters home again. There they embark with Mom on an absurd course of medical treatments, missed communications and domestic spying. Their journey brings them inevitably to the edge of the sea where scientific fact and the seduction of memory collide with the seismic force of change. Inspired by artists such as Theatre de la Jeune Lune, Robert LePage and Phillipe Genty, this funny and heartbreaking piece invents a world where surreal moments and magical images – a tiny childhood home of memory, an enormous ball of red yarn, an escape portal from the bathroom to the sea – reveal the mysterious heart of a family in crisis. A unique play that is smart and sly, inventive and absorbing, Evolution speaks to our shared longing for intimacy and transcendent release.

Evolution has received fellowships from the Women’s Interart Development Series and has been read and work-shopped at Six Figures Theatre Company, The Franklin Stage Company, LeMoyne College, Gettysburg College and Muhlenberg College Artist-in-Residence programs. Evolution was an alternate for The Public Theatre’s 2008 Emerging Writer’s Program and will be presented as part of the 2008 Berkshire Theatre Festival.