Romance, Drama, Pharma: Pharmedy Tonight

Romance can even happen in the clinical, all-business world of drug development.

Sometimes it can turn sordid, like the secretary-swapping club that cleared out one generation of rising execs at a major pharma company about a decade ago.

But, mostly we hope it is the stuff of the happy-ending variety.

At least that’s the way we hope our former colleague, Kate Fodor, sees the interplay of testing healing medicines and forming healing relationships.

Fodor, who spent about three years on the FDC Reports staff in the 1990’s, is an up-and-coming playwright. She’s been anointed as one of the “Eight to Watch” by The New York Times. Her last play, 100 Saints You Should Know (see short video clip) had a short run off-Broadway in the autumn of 2007 and continues to be performed in repertories. Fodor describes that work as an examination of a variety of “longings”: religious, sexual, artistic, emotional.

Enter pharma: Fodor has a new play, Rx, that apparently deals with the longings and healing of love in the setting of clinical trials.

Rx is headed into the trial run phase at a new play workshop this month in the arts and humanities summer community at Chautauqua, NY.

The advance blurb for the play describes it as a “big-pharma-office-dramedy” that examines the relationship between an “erstwhile poet” who enters a clinical trial to treat “workplace depression” and the doctor running the trial. The relationship leads “them both down a twisty path in pursuit of a true prescription for happiness.”

We have to believe that some of Fodor’s interest in the pharma industry as a setting for her new play comes from her experience looking at the industry while in the offices of "The Pink Sheet." We certainly hope that any untoward portraits of the workplace do not stem from those offices themselves. That’s always the risk of working with aspiring dramatists. More likely, the play will be an interesting and clever take on healing at several levels.

And, with the current vogue for office-based drama and Fodor’s clear talent as a writer, you can expect to see a prominent Rx emerging on theater marquees in the future.