Love Disorder will be staged May 2015 on the Kax Stage at Herberger Theater

Love Disorder is about a woman trying to break up from her boyfriend who is only capable of expressing himself in sports clichés. They are friends with two other couples who are deeply impacted by their potential breakup and all sorts of disorder ensues. It is both true to life and absurd — two descriptors, which in the case of love relationships, are hardly mutually exclusive.

I got the idea for the play when some friends of mine who are about 15 years younger were starting to get serious with each other intimately, and instead of being happy for them, I felt a strong sense of dread of the confusion and chaos they were possibly embarking on. I flipped tragedy to comedy in my mind and out came Love Disorder.

This play benefitted from a staged reading at Theatre Artist Studio directed by Judy Rollings. The read led to some revisions, and here we are. None of the characters are based on any real person, although friends have given me some suspicious looks. We’ve all made fools of ourselves in love at one time or another, but most of us were never properly diagnosed with the Love Disorder we were in fact experiencing.

Joe Bardin