Patiente 66

“ ‘Patient 66’ by Dorothée Zumstein is a play that recounts the tragic fate of Rosemary Kennedy, the eldest daughter of the famous Kennedy family, who, at the age of 23, became the sixty-sixth patient of Dr Freeman, a controversial pioneer of lobotomy in the United States. Through writing that is both detached and poignant, the author sheds light on the little-known story of this young woman sacrificed on the altar of family and social conformity, thereby denouncing the violence of 20th-century American psychiatry, particularly towards women deemed ‘non-conforming ’.

The play transports the reader to 1940s America, where an obsession with success and normality leads to irreversible choices, whilst examining the status of women and the acceptance of difference.