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Based on the play by Jeanmarie Simpson, HERETIC takes place in the last moments of the life of Quaker Mary Dyer, executed by the Puritan Church/State Government in early New England.

All the dead Hamlet characters have graduated from Limbo to Purgatory. Seems there's been a bit of a backlog. Hamlet Senior is ancient and over it. Polonius is befuddled, as ever. Rosencrantz feels like a nit wit, Guildenstern blames Rosencrantz. Ophelia is innocent and furious, Gertrude is spitting mad. Claudius is contrite to the point that you want to smack him. When Churchyards Yawn asks the question - will all these fatally flawed characters ever make it to Heaven?

Drenching rain pummels Nimipuu County as Helen, an idealistic history teacher, sits in her kitchen recovering from a double mastectomy and looking at a pile of bills and an employment termination letter. What makes more sense than suicide?

It's Maria Montessori's 70th birthday. She is on house arrest at the Theosophical Society compound in Madras (now Chennai), Tamil Nadu, India. As an Italian citizen, she is considered an "enemy" of the British colonial government. Her assistant, Githa, takes notes as Maria remembers the early days when she was in medical school and when she began her practice as a doctor and her research with "deficient" children that led to her revolutionary educational approach. The play exposes Maria's most intimate thoughts and the secret she carried with her for seventy years. The story of Maria Montessori is a microcosm of many of the factors that shaped women's experiences in Victorian Europe. Further, her tireless work continues to challenge commonly-held notions about childhood, learning and education to this day.