Victoria Hanover – The coordinator of the Refuge From the Street Program at the church. Middle-aged, she is an experienced nurse practitioner who, early in her career, spent some years downtown ministering to street people. Carmichael – The oldest of the individuals at the table, he is in his late 60s at the start of the play. Bipolar. He at one time aspired to be a songwriter but could never finish a song. Has worked at a variety of jobs—construction, mostly—but the main focus in his life has been finishing the song that is meant to capture his take on the meaning of life. For several years now he has been a participant in a study Jane is conducting on the connection between bipolar disorder and creative genius. Tom – A lightning calculator, in his late 40s. In his younger days he spent time in a psychiatric institution and got hepatitis C from an infected needle the first time he tried heroin. He has worked for years in the storeroom of a local health food outlet. An autodidact, he believes that transcendence is possible through numbers and the music of the spheres. He is something of an expert on Pythagoras. Tony – A college dropout. He had been an English major in the early 1980s who got swept up in the claims of poets—Coleridge, Ginsberg—that transcendence is possible through drugs. He has been in and out of detox and jail, has spent much of his life on the streets. He blames every death of a street person on the police. Daniel – He refers to himself as the Prophet Daniel. When Carmichael first met him he was calling himself the Prophet Isaiah. Towards the end of the play he will declare that he is John of Patmos, author of the Book of Revelation. Jack – Showed up unannounced one evening. No one knows where he came from or anything about his personal history. They don’t even know his name. “Jack” is just what they call him. His contribution is to offer commentary that undermines the facts or interpretations that the others present. In the production as I envision it, Jack is Black. Jane – A successful psychiatrist. She is conducting a study on the links between bipolar disorder and creative genius. Bipolar herself, she spent time in hospitals when she was young but, with the help of lithium, developed control over her mood swings, went to medical school, and became a leading authority in the field. When Carmichael told her about The Royal Society she decided to drop by to see what it was all about. Now she’s a regular. Will Lucas – A doctoral student in History at a local university planning to write his dissertation on attitudes towards the poor in European societies during the Middle Ages. As the play begins he has just arrived at the church for his first night as a volunteer in the Refuge From the Street program. Tera Fairchild – In her early twenties. Her biological father, Joseph Rameses, a Chippewa, was a member of The Royal Society. However, he died from a drug overdose before the play begins. She was born on a reservation in Michigan but removed from her mother as an infant, adopted by a family in Ann Arbor. She only learned her true origins after her adoptive father died. Eventually she went to the reservation, met members of her birth family, and was given letters from Joseph to her mother in which he mentioned The Royal Society. She comes to the church in hopes of meeting the people who knew him.