Friday, October 24, 2014

The Day Room, 1990



The Day Room the first play written by Don DeLillo a noted author of unique novels.
Perhaps his first novel of note was White Noise a book which I have read and really enjoyed.
I have also read some of his other book including End Zone, Mao II, Libra and Falling Man.

The show title for each program was hand-lettered in crayon.

Act I of the play is set in a in a psychiatric hospital and we see some really unique characters and we are not sure who is the staff and who are the patients.
Our set seemed  simple, a white hospital room.
At intermission there is a set change from the hospital room to a motel.
To make the change one of our very tall actors playing an orderly came onstage and just leaned into the side of the set and the walls of the room shifted angels and  a previously unseen window appeared.
Of course what really happened is that about 6 stagehands behind the set helped move the walls when the cue was given.

The Day Room, Act I

The cast was a mix of faculty, adult and traditional students.
I really enjoyed the oddness of the play.
There were some fun, odd, surprising and unique moments in the play.
In the second act on of the actors is brought in a straitjacket and chained into an alcove in the set and became a television set.
Using different voices and noises the actor became various  television programs as another actor used a TV remote to change the channels.
I am sure that many of the audience did not follow the absurdest structure of the play but it was still interesting.

The Day Room, Act II

At the end of the play instead of a curtain call the actors ran off the front of the stage, up the aisles and out into the lobby.
When the audience got up to leave when they got to the lobby they found themselves surrounded by or 7  or 8  stage hands holding  4' x 8' white flats just waving them side to side.
One of the crew was "little person", or dwarf, who was very game and he was OK with it when he was given a  smaller flat, maybe 3' x 5'.


After a few moments of the waving flats the cast appeared on the upper level of the lobby and repeated the first line of the play and then everyone ran off.
As the audience left to go the parking lot or back to the dorms they passed by the stage hands with their flats dancing  around a bright light on a stand the was set out in the lawn outside the building.
This was all done in support of one of the themes of the play in that the play never ends.
Many students had a hard time writing their critiques for this play.
Absurdest drama can be hard to explain, even for those working on it.








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