Synthesis

The focus of the class on monday (27th Apr 09) was SYNTHESIS again.

We discussed about our homework, where we had to find connections between the following:
-Meisner
-Repetition
-Stick Work
-Ionesco
-Andrei Serban
-Peking Opera
-The Lesson
-Romania
-Meyerhold
-Absurdism

(I will scan the worksheet and post it up as soon as I get it back).

Then we were given a task. The task was to choose at least 5 connections and synthesize them to make a devised play.
Since we had to choose 5, and we were in a group of 5, we decided to choose one each:

-Repetition
-Stick Work
-The Lesson
-Meyerhold (The torture and his death)
-Absurdism

We were brainstorming ideas with this list as our guidelines, and Maria suggested "Multiple-personality." From there we discussed more about these mental disorders and we came to discuss about Schizophrenia (where the person hears voices in their heads and becomes more aggressive due to that).

With this, ideas came flowing into my head. I remembered the scene we once read in class from Heroin Lies, when Vicky, the drug addict, started to hallucinate or hear voices and it was abstract to show the audience the situation in Vicky's point of view.
I thought that the person that suffers from Schizophrenia would be repetitive and almost use Meisner's techniques to make him or her seem very annoyed and aggressive. For example:

A: How are you?
B (suffers from Schizophrenia): How are you? Fine.

This could be said in a way that it is very abrupt and show that the person may be paranoid and has some kind of problem.
Connecting to dialogue, the dialogue with this person with Schizophrenia and a normal person could be very abrupt and terse, like how Sofia and I did our scene from The Lesson.
Also, absurdism and stick work could be incorporated into my idea with one person with this disorder, and the rest with sticks creating sets, and even abstract images, that may or may not be symbolic. It could represent cages or like in Shun Kin, it could represent doors (sets). They could also be the voices in the person's head.


However, we thought of other ideas, and Sara brought up that she once read a Japanese book that was about this person who could not stand it if he did not swim for at least 2 hours per day. Which then brought up "The Swimmer." Mr. Evans showed us the trailer and talked about it a bit more. It was about a man who decided to swim home through a path of swimming pools.

Going back to Sara's idea, I think it could work. We could use the sticks to create a swimming pool like Mr. Evans suggested. I also elaborated on this idea. Since the person is obviously ill, he has a doctor, and the conversation between the doctor and the patient could be very much like the conversation between the professor and the pupil in The Lesson. Sara had said that the doctor said to the patient not to swim anymore, but it didnt work, so I pondered on that a bit more. I came with a scene in my head where the patient and the doctor are having a conversation and then the doctor tells the patient not to swim anymore. This caused the patient to go berserk and then he could go into a trance-like state, where he lies down (or even falls) and four or three other people come on and form a bow around the patient. Then with little sound effects and movement, it could represent the water and the patient could be moving as if he was swimming on his back. This incorporates the ideas of absurdity and stick work.
The idea of restraining him from the swimming pool could also link to the torture and death of Meyerhold (not exactly having Meyerhold the character, but keep the idea of the torture and death parallel to the plot. It could be that the restraint is causing the character mental torture).