An award winning thriller about growing up in the digital era.

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#IAmTheCheese is a reimagining of Robert Cormier’s 1977 novel by the same name and written by local playwright Josh MacDonald that has been in development since 2017 and won the Playwright Guild of Canada’s Sharon Enkin Theatre for Young Audiences Award in 2020.
 

IAmTheCheese is set in the present day, and follows a traumatized teenager named Adam Farmer through a series of interviews with an analyst named Brint, as Adam struggles to recall deeply repressed memories of his past. Beginning with just a wisp of a children’s nursery rhyme—“The Farmer in the Dell”—Adam begins to reassemble his sense of self, bit by bit. Eventually, Adam remembers the social stigma of his preteen years, when his parents inexplicably banned the use of the internet: no cellphones, no computer, no wifi, etc. But Adam dares to begin a relationship with a girl from his school named Amy Hertz, and this relationship blooms in cyberspace. However, the more that Adam remembers about Amy, and about his own parents, the closer he comes to recognizing that a massive, faceless danger might be surrounding him still.

Through exploring the complex and intricate world of growing up in the digital era, #IAmTheCheese is an enriching and reflective thriller for young audiences.