Category E by Belinda Cornish is a black comedy set in a laboratory in a world where testing – cosmetic, medical and agricultural – is now performed on humans. See it Feb. 21-24 at Memorial Hall, UNB.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIINL39wuDk&list=PLhp_7RTV17hjeUPQq9aMJwRI7HN3Boyfe&index=3
Category E is a black comedy set in a laboratory in a world where testing – cosmetic, medical and agricultural – is now performed on humans selected through an intelligence-based eugenics program, and those deemed inferior are sterilized and made property of the state, in service to those of higher value.
The play begins with two individuals in a white cell with two beds and two chairs: one is a half-blind paraplegic, the other a clinical psychopath. A third arrives. Whilst unspecified atrocities take place outside their cell, inside they compete for food and bedding, play monopoly, try to figure out who’s next door, and are called outside one by one for mysterious “showers,” returning more damaged each time. Within 36 hours, there will be only two again.
Laboratories define the level of pain and suffering caused by testing under 4 categories: “B”, “C”, “D” and “E”, “B” being social and psychological experiments such as rats in a maze, “E” being anything from active pain testing, to drowning, decapitation, and so on. Category E is a comedy of menace that takes a wry and unsentimental look at the cavalier cruelties of animal science, and by extension obliquely asks how we value life.
Theatre UNB’s production is directed and produced by senior students Cassandra Bullet,
Allyson Roy, and Brittney Ashley, and stars Kelly McAllister as Millet, Alicia Donovan as Filligree, and Katherine Hall as Corcoran. Theatre UNB invite you to join them from Wednesday, February 21st to Saturday February 24th at 7:30 nightly to indulge in a night of human testing at the Memorial Hall Auditorium, located at 9 Bailey Drive on the UNB campus. Tickets (14$ Regular, 10$ Senior and Underwaged, 8$ Students) will be available at the door. For more information phone (506) 740-6880 or email bplourde@unb.ca
