Mental examines the functional dysfunctionality of the human experience, and the ways in which people choose to navigate life’s turbulence. 

After her divorce, 40-year old Amy Clark-Reed returned home to her religious, medicated mother Ellie, who has a history of running off without notice. Lately, anytime Mom runs off, Amy and her siblings get together for a meal and wait for the cops to bring her home. The play joins the Clark siblings for 12 hours at the house where they grew up, in a small town on the outskirts of wine country in Northern California.

Mental is the newest play from writer and director, Gregg D. Garner, whose most recent work “ALIEN: The Musical,” was performed at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center (TPAC), and reprised for the Chancellor of Vanderbilt and his lecture series at the Martha Rivers Ingram Center for the Performing Arts. The musical received critical acclaim, including “Most Outstanding Original Play/Musical” from renowned Nashville critic, Jeffrey Ellis in 2016.