In Conference Call all three doctors and Martin Mills remain on stage throughout the entire performance. The play is based around an abstract phone call in the protagonists’ thoughts, and looks profoundly at the psychological responses of our minds when we suffer a tragedy. It looks into the different ways our minds may handle the grief post trauma.
Martin Mills is a risk-taking, city banker, who has developed severe mental blockages, brought on by an extremely painful life event. Through this he has lost all memory of his life and identity. Martin’s last memory was chasing a female ghost around a cemetery reciting the Lord’s Prayer backwards, whilst performing a disturbing religious ceremony. He is aware that his mind has closed down completely.
Conference Call, is just that, a long metaphorical conference call within Martin Mills’ mind, between the thinker (Martin) and three doctors, (the committee in his mind) who represent fetchers and carriers of memories in his consciousness, all fighting against the thinker in his internal dialogue. The doctors fail to agree at times, causing a division and psychological problems; all three and the thinker conspire together finding undesirable things in the memory. Certain unleashed memories cause uproar, and Martin’s mind goes on strike so he is unable to remember what happened to his missing wife.