Milk of Amnesia

When Judith meets with visiting professor  Geoffrey Carlisle to go over her manuscript, Geoffrey — a celebrated novelist — expresses surprise at the graphic nature of its content. Judith tells Geoffrey her manuscript isn’t fiction at all but a factual account of the night they spent together. And what begins as a literary consultation becomes a psychological duel, with Judith’s memory on one side, Geoffrey’s gaslighting on the other. Geoffrey, urbane and patronizing, is dangerously skilled at controlling the terms of reality, elegantly deflecting, while Judith’s need to be believed hardens into a perversely theatrical confrontation with a handgun at Geoffrey’s crotch.

Geoffrey Carlisle is a literate chamber-piece role for a man in his 60s: a celebrated novelist and visiting professor who gaslights a vulnerable student into believing their kinky sexual encounter was a figment of her imagination. The role gives an actor charm, intellect, moral slipperiness — and a gift for making language feel like a weapon.

Judith is a volatile role for an actress in her late 20s: a graduate fiction student who confronts her celebrated professor with a manuscript based on the sexual encounter he insists never happened. The part gives vulnerability, humiliation, and a turn to danger — a role for someone able to be both deeply human and terrifyingly combustible.