Directing
For my directing concept, I chose Martin McDonough's The Pillowman - the tale of Katurian, a horror story author who finds himself being arrested by a totalitarian police state for murders that closely follow his horrific short stories. Being put in a cell with his brother Michal, he starts to recount his stories to both him and the detectives interrogating him, figuring out exactly what happened to him in his childhood and the murders that mirror his stories. My concept would revolve around a black box-style presentation, proscenium-style, with Katurian's scenes with Michal downstage, the cramped interrogation room upstage left with the detectives, and other actors playing out the horror stories in silhouette, behind a scrim. This would contribute to the unknown, dreamlike nature of the horror, and would allow for affecting images on a smaller budget. It would also bring Katurian's directly in front of the audience, creating an intense and frightening experience that would hold the audience's attention.
The play would be presented with very naturalistic acting set against very abstract and presentational settings - the silhouetted horror stories, the macabre nature of the mentally-challenged Michal, and the dystopian nature of the interrogation room would all serve as maddening surroundings for the relatively-sane Katurian to interact with and react to. I wish to demonstrate the relationship between an author and his works, and/or his sense of creativity, by linking Katurian to his stories through the scrim-silhouette presentation. This would give the audience the sense that we are experiencing these stories as figments of Katurian's imagination, made more horrific by his own exaggerations.
With my concept for The Pillowman, it would play out almost like a Halloween show, with dark lighting, abstract imagery for the recounting of the horror stories, and a lot of dirt and grime in the sound and set designs to create a feeling of discomfort in the audience. The acting would be very naturalistic, yet bold and theatrical when it needed to be (the storytelling sequences). My hope is to create an atmosphere of dread and horror that gradually intensifies until the very end of the play, just like a good horror story should. The Pillowman's atmosphere would echo the very same stories Katurian tells, creating an affordable, controversial yet thought-provoking adaptation of a highly-acclaimed play that would attract younger audiences as well.
Acting
Katurian's tactics mostly lie in earnestness; he often speaks plainly when not speaking through his stories. Often, he conveys his true feelings through reciting his work; he comforts Michal with "The Little Green Pig" and other stories, hiding behind the stories' false nature. However, what he comes to realize over the course of the play is that the stories are far from false - they reveal interesting things about him. When Tupolski insists that the father "represents something," Katurian maintains that he "isn't saying anything," refusing to define himself in those terms. He is constantly evasive and avoidant, opting to hide as much as possible behind his work: "The only duty of a storyteller is to tell a story" (p. 7). It is only when he realizes the consequences of his stories (it leads his brother to kill) that he understands the responsibility he must take for them.
Writing
KATURIAN: I've never liked it outside. Too many policemen. I don't really know what it was like before, but I'm sure it was better than it is now - alarms, secret raids, people watching your every move. It's maddening. It takes everything I can just to keep writing these stories; at the same time, the writing itself is freeing. It allows me to see a world beyond political dissidence, beyond the oppressive nature of government; these tales allow me to control the fate of the story. I can't really control what goes on out here.
Works Cited
Cohen, Robert. Theatre Brief Version. 9th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 2011
McDonagh, Martin. The Pillowman (First edition ed.). London: Faber, 2003. Print.
