Jason Sherman

Two people from the Actual are brought to the New World for a scientific experiment: to see if they can be reconditioned to fit in with their adopted surroundings. One is Linda, who had been born in the New World and sent into exile for the crime of getting pregnant; she is accompanied by her child Alex, who is enthralled by one of the New World scientists in charge of the experiment. Once in the New World, Alex -- now designated DDL8609 -- learns the hard way that harmony and happiness come with a price. This new version of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is as much about our present as it is our future.

Six actors test the limits of storytelling.

A reunion in Israel for three longtime friends turns into a confrontation over the truth behind a tragic night from their past.

Four writers working on a show about a SWAT team are thrown into crisis when one of them — Colin, who is black — is carded while driving around late at night. One of the other writers, Maia, was with him and saw it all.

Colin wants to turn his experience into an episode of the show, and when their producer (Elsa) rejects one of the other storylines, the team gets to work on Colin's episode. He wants it to be a
strong critique of the police, and convinces Pete to send his draft to the producer. Elsa is someone who craves shiny new objects, and reacts positively to Colin’s story. But soon she is pushing for major changes, mainly to strip out any suggestion that the police force harbours racists. Colin bristles and fights back. Pete find himself in between, and increasingly at odds with both his staff and Elsa.

Desperate to save her show and by extension her company, Elsa begins to work behind Pete’s back, effectively stripping him of his duties. She insists that another member of the writing team, Danny (who is white), be given Colin’s episode to rewrite. The results infuriate Colin. He sees the rewrite as a whitewash of his story. Things get worse for him when Maia questions whether she can still act as a witness to the beating he suffered at the hands of the cops. She is beginning to doubt what she saw. Also, her career is at stake.

Things come to a head when Pete, in his final vengeful act, leaks Colin’s script and Danny’s rewrite to a tv blogger, as evidence of how tv suppresses critical voices and maintains the status quo. Pete is fired. Danny takes over the show. Elsa bribes Maia to recant her story. She also tries to buy off Colin, as a way to stifle the controversy created when the leaked scripts went viral.

Colin, seeing that he has no power in this world, and tempted by the possibility that he might one day be able to tell his story in his own way, returns to the writers’ room.

With a gun.

A professor of English suffers a stroke in his office. When he comes to his senses he is in a hospital room, unable to speak.

The professor is Marshall McLuhan, the man who told the world in the 1960s that “the medium is the message” and that we live in a Global Village; he made these observations at a time when the world was speeding up through the mass use of electronic technology (the phone, the tv, the computer). McLuhan was out to alert the world about the side effects of such machines on the human mind and body. For a time, people listened.

Then they stopped.

In The Message, McLuhan tries to find out why people stopped listening to him, and what — in the end — he was really trying to say.

Scenes alternate between McLuhan’s dreamlike, quick-shifting memories, and visits from friends and acquaintances formed over the years, who have come to pay their last respects.

The professor's position asan eminent, if little understood, social critic is examined. A narrative loop emerges, in which it is discovered that McLuhan is reliving the last moments before his
stroke, moments into which elements of his life are poured. McLuhan's Catholicism
also plays an important part as he searches for the meaning of his own work in
preparation for his last day on earth. But before he goes, he has to remember one thing:

The message.

New York, 1937. A young Orson Welles rises to the occasion when a pro-union musical by Marc Blitzstein is threatened with closure by the government. Locked out of their original theatre, Welles and his troupe head uptown for a one-night only staging that became a legend.

The son of an assassinated weapons designer goes mano-a-mano with a CIA Officer in a battle of truths. Inspired by the real story of Gerald Bull, who was creating long-range missiles for Iraq just prior to the Gulf War -- and paid for it with his life.

Reuben Field is having a bad day. In the course of 24 hours, he loses his wife, children, brother and job. But a chance encounter with a former lover gives him a second chance at life -- the question is: will he take it? A tragicomedy.

Three Jewish friends gather for a reunion a decade after one of them took part in the murder of an Arab teenager in Toronto -- and fled to Israel to escape justice.

Following a massacre of Palestinians by an Israeli doctor, Nathan Abramowitz performs an inquiry into the roots of the tragedy, and discovers that they lead directly back to him.

A Hebrew school teacher's unwieldy screenplay about a Jewish messiah catches the eye of a producer. Their professional and personal entanglements lead her to an even deeper understanding of the nature of blind loyalty.

A young woman's audition takes a dark turn when the director demands that she strip down for the role.

Family loyalties are severely tested over the fate of a beloved summer home. A contemporary retelling of The Cherry Orchard.

The biblical story of Joseph and his brothers is recast as the tale of a Jewish refugee from Czarist Russia, whose forced move to Canada ends up saving his life -- and possibly that of his family as they attempt to flee Nazi occupation.

A land surveyor's quest to learn the history of a plot of land leads her to a number of discoveries, but the mystery of her daughter's disappearance there proves harder to pin down.