Mighton, a mathematician from University of Toronto's Fields Institute, brought his considerable professional experience to bear on the writing of the play.
Possible Worlds won a Governor General's Literary Award for Drama in 1992 alongside Short History of Night.
Directed by Robert Lepage and starring Tom McCamus and Tilda Swinton, it garnered wide critical acclaim, won two Genie Awards, and was nominated for a further four.
The play begins with detectives Berkley and Williams at a crime scene where a man, identified as George Barber, has been murdered, the top of his head cut off and his brain stolen.
One of the detective is interviewing a neuroscientist (who we learn at the end of the play is named Pensfield) specializing on research of the nervous system.
Creatures like humans that can anticipate possible futures and make contingency plans have an evolutionary advantage, according to him.
Joyce is looking at a picture of the beach while telling George about a demonstration that was being held outside her lab in response to one of colleague's work.
Joyce Barber, George's real life wife, is met by the detectives and told that her husband's brain is alive and producing rudimentary consciousness in a very discontinuous “fluctuating dream state”.
Possible Worlds is a Post Modern Expressionist piece in that neither the relationship with the viewer or the subject is stable.
The scenes are disjointed and it disrupts continuity which is what creates that unstable relationship with the viewer which can also put the play under the Style of Modernism.
At times it is mood driven and we are dealing with the hidden world inside George's brain which would symbolism.
[5] The biggest Spectacle on stage in this play would be the image of the human and rat brain in glass containers hooked up to wires and lights.
Without certain lines like when George says, “I’m in a case.” He is not saying figuratively but it sees to be so, but he is literally in a case, his body in a casket and his brain in a jar at a science lab.
[6] Possible Worlds addresses many controversial topics regarding today's scientific advancements and the moral issues that relate to it.
With the advancements in science we will most likely some day know exactly how the brain works but right now we are far from the answer but get closer all the time.
[9] The biggest road block is going to be with human testing because it is seen as immoral but without it the advancements in science may not happen.
This play explores the human consciousness, morals and scientific advancement all in one, while adding a bit of romance.
Possible Worlds is very discontinuous and hard to follow at times and the viewer must pay close attention to pick up the very subtle messages and themes.
Joyce is a scientist on some worlds, a stock broker in others and in one entirely different construct she is Jocelyn, the teacher of a meditation type class focused at increasing intelligence through imagination.
Pensfield causes discomfort in the characters and the viewer and forces them to think about questions in morality, especially concerning science and man.
Later the man shows up dead, frozen to death at room temperature which makes the detectives question what they are dealing with in these cases.