A work in progress.

Act 1, Scene 1

Characters:
Dr Vikram Malik, the top psychiatrist at the Thornbury Hospital. He is a 50-year-old Indian-Australian dressed in black slacks and shoes, a white shirt and a white coat.
Dr Charles Chang, a junior psychiatrist learning the ropes under Dr Malik. He is a 25-year-old Chinese-Australian dressed in black slacks and shoes, a white shirt and a white coat.
Saul Babayaro, a security guard. He is a strong 30-year-old Nigerian-Australian man dressed in black slacks, black shoes and a white T-shirt.
Pluto Pender, a 25-year-old Anglo-Australian man with a colourful mohawk. Like the punk in the photo above, he's dressed in leather.

Setting:
An interview room in the psych ward of the Thornbury Hospital. It’s a plain room with 4 visitor chairs.

Voice over:

O it was the year 2006 of our whored and in the acute psychiatric unit of the Thornbury Hospital in Melbourne, while most of his patients, if they weren’t struggling to eat their breakfast, lining up for their drugs, chain-smoking cigarettes or watching TV, were, after being inflamed by the sunny personalities of the news programs, running up and down the corridors on fire, one Dr Vikram Malik, a top Indian-Australian psychiatrist with a shaved head and a grey goatee, sat in a small interview room with a plump and oily Charles Chang, a Chinese-Australian psychiatrist-in-training, patiently waiting for a Saul Babayaro, a black and brawny Nigerian-Australian boxer who had recently been employed by the hospital as a security guard, to fetch a new captive, a young Anglo-Australian punk with an odd name and a colourful mohawk.

Curtain up.

Malik:
So Chang, did young Pluto resist being treated?

Chang:
Brute force wasn’t needed, but he proved wary,
even paranoid about our most honourable work,
proclaiming we care only about acting like thugs 
in subduing rebels for our friends in Big Pharma,
not about the bleeding gums of the medicated
or the bulk they acquire, leaving them so down
they care naught about the sexual dysfunctions
that -

Malik (as Saul leads Pluto into the room):
Behold! It's another triumph of psychiatric care!
You should trust your treatment is truly salutary,
for according to all the research, never skewed,
Abilify, far from being like our typical old drugs, 
effectuates only a few side effects, all bearable,
in bestowing, if the patient remains dedicated,
"a lovability in the employability and profitability
of stability", I'm hearing at the fancy functions
I -

Pluto (sitting down in a chair):
I feel hungover and anxious. Unusually anxious.

Malik:
I wager, sir, that's perfectly normal for a hellion.
You’re worried, deep down, about going to jail.

Chang:
Perhaps your better angel sounds thunderous
because without being drugged you were deaf.
You –

Pluto:
I’m not a demon. I'm not at all sinister or scary.
Rather, like a mighty and compassionate angel,
upon seeing strange souls in the bog, in the fen
of conformity, I, knowing it to be dirty and dark,
courageously, through original acts of rebellion,
haul many out to a distant and eccentric haven
where everything is scintillating and wondrous
for opposing all the fainthearted fuddy-duddies
so keen on maintaining a world that’s ordinary
they hate everything that smells of strangeness
and condemn it with a plastic authoritarian pen,
saying -

Chang:
So you smoke marijuana, do you? How often?

Pluto:
No, I haven’t smoked marijuana in several years.
And I wouldn’t worry about any acid trips I took,
nor about any ecstasy pills, any heroin or cocaine.
My true poison of choice in life has been alcohol.
I, because I regularly buy beer, bourbon and wine
and drink alone to both rouse my consciousness
and die in a manner pleasurable and prolonged,
have -

Malik:
Schizophrenia, it's a brutal, debilitating disease 
often affiliated with alcoholism, crime and tears.

Pluto (getting out of his chair):
Say what? Am I a poor schizophrenic because -

Malik:
You drink to excess mainly to numb your brain. 
And -

Pluto:
From such slender threads an unyielding noose,
thinks the cheerful old shrink in rushing to twine.
O -

Chang:
What exactly did they do, our gallant journalists,
to put in your head the idea you were wronged?

Pluto (pacing the room):
O imagine if a newspaper, in covering psychiatry,
never saw fit to publish one complimentary word,
if you were always painted as foolish, never wise.
I bet you’d all stand and raise a hearty objection
against any paper that so imperilled the innocent.
I bet you'd argue, in the strongest possible terms,
fearing, if you did not, that a bunch of shoppers
might get stabbed by an angry psychotic and die,
that the paper was wrong to devalue psychiatry.
I bet - 

Malik:
We certainly would. But you're still being absurd!
The crimes you committed in the middle of town,
they won’t provide psychotics with any protection.
In fact, sir, being a snake, cold-blooded and wild,
you -

Saul:
Nah, violent protesters aren’t snakes, but germs.

Pluto:
Of a righteous, non-violent spirit and movement
that no one, however silly, could honestly deny?

Saul:
Nah, I mean they’re a dirty and disgusting virus 
of unremitting turmoil, nothing ever being right.
Now -

Malik:
Saul! Are you paid to act like a political pundit?
Please take our poor patient to the dining room.
He must be hungry and his breakfast is served.

Saul:
Let's go, Pluto. The toast, it’s as hard and cold
as -

Pluto (in following Saul out of the room):
Your heart? Whatever happened to your heart?

Malik (after a moment of silence):
So Chang, you’ve seen his delusional intensity.
What would you recommend for our patient?

Chang:
ECT. Without delay. I mean, his lack of insight,
it's -

Malik:
Total. And yes, given the beast of schizophrenia
has left Pluto gutted by disaffection and gloom
and he therefore thinks he's superior to society,
endangering everyone, especially our little fold,
if no drug helps him, it's our duty to go electric.
We must rid the world of his dangerous density.

Curtain down.

Act 1, Scene 2

Coming soon.