Physics and the physical world collide for writer T. Berto.

His newest creation, A Singularity of Being, this year ’s best new play winner at Toronto’s Fringe Festival, hits closer to home than audiences may realize.

“It added so much veracity and visceral parts of myself in it,” said Berto of the play’s complex, but also deeply personal subject matter.

Berto lost a childhood friend last year to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the same disease that cripples the play’s central character, shattered genius Roland Mathers.

Loosely based on brilliant physicist Stephen Hawking, Mather’s character faces two realities: his own imprisonment in a body he cannot escape and the reality of God’s existence. Berto explained the characters’ challenge to comprehend the scientific and religious world as the disease’s slow progression eventually affects his ability to communicate.

“He [Mathers] begins to progress in his understanding of the universe as his world begins to shrink,” explained Berto of Mathers, who races to unravel the mysteries of Einstein.

Mathers is played with fierce complexity by Clinton Walker who said plugging into the emotion of the character comes with embracing our flaws.

“Ultimately these are people who breathe and live and love. They feel disappointment and want.”

For director Edward Roy, each play he approaches is personal and he says the bonds in the play are matters of realities that exist when individuals become consumed by their own relationships.

“There is a meeting of metaphysics and physics, ideas of reality break down,” Roy said. “The ideas of the play centre on relationships and how they survive when someone is obsessed on achieving something.”

Not a concept likely foreign to Berto who first entered Fringe in 2000 with his play Bash, produced during the fest’s annual playwrighting contest. He enjoys seeing the audience reaction to Singularity and feels flattered Toronto audiences welcome what he says is an incredibly democratic and one of Canada’s best cultural experiences.

“You get to see an essence of what people are trying to put out there in terms of performance and they’re communicating it to an audience.”

A Singularity of Being is playing in limited run onstage until July 12th at the Tarragon Mainspace.