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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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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