The Almighty Sometimes

Judges' comments

Anna is 18 and has been medicated for her mental illness since she was a child. Post high school and trying to figure out what she might do with her life, she begins to question who she might be without her medication. In the process her relationship with her mother fractures to the point of breaking, her behaviour becomes irrational and she loses sight of herself completely. After hitting rock bottom, Anna and her mother finally find a point where they can start again. 

The Almighty Sometimes raises questions about mental illness, the link between medication and inhibition of creativity, medication of young people and the complexity of the mother daughter relationship. Most compelling about this play are its deep insights and the complexity with which it treats its subject matter. Providing no easy answers and provoking many questions, it contains an emotional truth that is most powerful and affecting..

The Almighty Sometimes is this panel’s choice for winner of the Nick Enright Playwriting Prize. The panel was deeply impressed by the skill of the writer in weaving such a complex story and creating such nuanced and detailed characters. It was not purely the level of craft on display that attracted the panel’s eye but the timely nature of its searing observations into the complexity of living with a mental illness and caring for someone with a mental illness. Like many great plays, it manages to ask us questions already circling within contemporary conversation but puts this exploration into real human bodies who allow us to fully see the richness and complexity of the ideas, of humans and the world we live in.