In Lear on the Second Floor, a contemporary inversion of Shakespeare's King Lear, a prominent neuroscience researcher in her late 50s or early 60s (Dr. Nora Lear) is suddenly beset by dementia. As Nora loses her bearings and her autonomy, she is quickly at the mercy of her three quarreling, but loving daughters who range in lifestyle from high society to adult movie making. An attending nurse from the Caribbean gives Nora some respite. Nora’s dead husband Mortimer, throughout, is her constant escort as she walks through a vortex of memory, guilt and human sensibility. The least vulnerable and most professional daughter wins court appointed guardianship, but Nora escapes from this Court’s tight grip by flying with her husband through the notorious Second Floor.