Alec Toller found the inspiration for 13 Plays About ADHD All at the Same Time while at his day job.

In addition to being a Dora Award-winning director and playwright, Toller is also a psychological associate. While researching ADHD, in order to better treat his clients, he began to notice that a lot of the disorder's symptoms sounded an awful lot like him.

"I kept going 'Oh, that sounds like me,' or 'Yeah, that [strategy] would be really helpful," he says.

One diagnosis later, he had the genesis of a play. Or, at least the title of a play. Toller says that he kind of worked backwards on this 13 Plays About ADHD, coming up with a title first, then writing the play to match it.

"The title came to me… I was like, 'That is such a dumb idea. I have to do it. I'm compelled to,'" he says.

He described the play as being like "if the Muppets were trying to put on a seminar about ADHD and everything keeps getting worse and worse."

"There's these two host characters and… they are trying to do the seminar onwhat it's like to have ADHD, or how you can have ADHD too, if you try," he adds. "The supporting cast is meant to help support them, but they don't because they have their own ideas. And the seminar — it's boring. They want to do something more fun. And so it's like it keeps interrupting things. It keeps getting derailed and derailed and derailed."

He says that the play itself is like a metaphor for what it's like to live with ADHD.

"It's like embodying that battle for internal control or, like, organizing your own thoughts, which is, you know, usually impossible," he says. And so it like, tries to give the felt sense of ADHD. So it's not just like you watch it and go like, 'Oh, I learned a fact or two.' It's an hour-ish of time where you have ADHD too, just by being in the room."

The play first ran in October, and is getting a second run as a part of Toronto Sketchfest. Toller says that the most remarkable takeaway from the show's first go-round was that it made any sense at all.

"The whole time writing [this play], I kind of had a rule of like, 'everything goes in the pot,'" he says. "Like, if I have an idea, it's going to get in there… [there's] a dance number and there's a puppetry piece and there's like a game show part. So it's like always changing. But that also presents a very key challenge of like, how the hell does it make sense?"

Toller adds that, while the premise of the play is kind of inherently goofy, he wanted to make sure the play had a real emotional heart to it, as well. Having ADHD is hard. Toller says that it comes with "a lot of tears… a lot of shame, and a lot of self-criticism." He wanted that struggle to be part of the play, too.

"I was worried that in the silliness and the chaos that would get lost," he says. "But it's been very touching to see that come through, that people respond to the emotional core of the show.... This show is really about trying to break through that shame and kind of just show up and present yourself and be like, 'Yeah, I'm kind of an idiot. Sometimes I forget how to do basic human tasks, but also, who cares?' You could also be brilliant at other things, too."