A Night of Madness: An incredibly normal look at how we treat the psychologically 'touched.'

Lillian KalishStaff Writer“A Night of Madness” is upon us, ladies and gents — a night of asylums, lobotomies, injections, inspections and six-feet-tall white rabbits. But what does madness mean? More importantly, how do we treat those we brand as psychologically disturbed?Originally, I thought I had a definitive answer — my mind jumped to images of medication bottles, strait jackets, and Hannibal Lecter from “Silence of the Lambs.” Lecter coldly said, “I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti” with the most serious vindication.I naïvely thought insanity meant that the mind is grossly disconnected from the soul and from reality. Perhaps, that to be insane, a person must live in a world so distorted and cut off from reality, that he or she is rendered incapable of inhabiting our reality, the one from which I write.And then to qualify this argument, the word reality must be defined and then the argument itself would become so wrapped up in existentialism, it would be like reading “Waiting for Godot” without any background information.However, as the night unfolded, my opinions began to change.  The plays have not only spoken to me on an ethical level, but have also had a lasting effect on cast members.“One of the biggest messages is that of dehumanization,” senior Emily Kottler who takes on the role of Veta Simmons in “Harvey,” said.This year’s fall spectacle, contrary to previous years, will focus on one major theme: madness. In previous years, the theater department has focused on such themes as love (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”) or prejudice (“12 Angry Jurors”). This year’s new theater director, Kate Soller, is taking a new approach on the human condition.This is Soller’s first year directing at Samo; before this, she worked as a theater director for Los Angeles Unified as well as for Forest Grove High School in Portland, Oregon.  Soller went out on a limb with the arrangement of the fall play, after failing to attain the rights to both Mary Chase’s “Harvey” and Dale Wasserman’s “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” She decided to condense the two plays and thus, a “Night of Madness” was born.“At first I thought that these plays didn’t go together even though they were both about insanity. Then I realized that they were perfectly different together,” Soller said. “I was interested in playing around with how the two could come together and how the messages of the plays would come out stronger in the actors. The two plays bring up good questions, like what insanity means and how we can identify it. Also, it raises the question of what to do with ‘insane people.’ I had my students do a workshop so they could really get into the mind of crazy people.”The theme of insanity wasn’t one that Soller gave much thought to at first.“I don’t really know why I chose insanity as the theme. I wonder what that says about me,” Soller said.Although Soller chose this topic spontaneously, she did not foresee the profound affect it would have on the cast (and even more on audiences).“I’ve known both plays for a long time. I read ‘Cuckoo’s Nest’ sophomore year but, through watching the acting, I have become emotionally invested in the characters, in treating people as humans,” Soller said.Kottler shares similar sentiments about the two plays.“‘Cuckoo’s Nest’ shows the dehumanization of regular people. Harvey shows how someone who seems crazy may actually not be. At the end of the play, as Veta Simmons, I stop myself and realize that people are better off being unique even if they are different than others,” Kottler said.The first half of Samo’s “A Night of Madness” touches on the darker side of insanity. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” has been condensed into just under an hour and twenty minutes, preceeding intermission.The audience is introduced to a solemn 1960s mental institution run by a wicked Nurse Ratched, played by junior Alice Kors.  Some of the patients at the institution don’t even seem mentally unstable, rather, just people who couldn’t live up to society’s standards. Then in comes Randle P. McMurphy, played by senior Joe Colajezzi — a life-of-the-party kind of guy and ex-con who takes a stand against Ratched. Because the play is condensed, it progresses at a much faster pace than the novel or the movie.Despite its grim first-half, “A Night of Madness” ultimately finds redemption in “Harvey.” The second part of the evening sheds a more optimistic and even comical light on insanity.Elwood P. Dowd, played by senior Emmett Storms, the protagonist, is a sweet man whose best friend happens to be a six-foot-tall imaginary rabbit. Of course no one believes him and automatically assumes he is crazy. His sister Veta Simmons (Kottler) is thoroughly disturbed with the situation as his “craziness” brings the 1940s socialite family down. Simmons goes so far as to bring Dowd to an insane asylum and in the process accidentally gets admitted because of her worried demeanor.The portrayal of insanity in “Cuckoo’s Nest” differs from that in “Harvey” with the set design of the mental institutions. In “Cuckoo’s Nest,” the institution is bustling with patients allowing an inside view of the relationships between the patients and authority figures. The sanitarium in “Harvey” is quite the opposite, completely empty except for staff which reveals the eeriness of these institutions.“The plays showed me that insanity doesn’t necessarily mean ‘crazy,’ rather, just a different view from the norm,” junior Sophie Crowley said.The issues brought up with insanity seem to stretch farther than just identifying and treating mental illness. Together, the two plays show what it is like to be different, whether our best friends are giant rodents or we have speech impediments. Moreover, the plays show us how society views “different” people and leave us with the confidence to be true to ourselves despite what others think.“In real life, a ‘Cuckoo’s Nest’ ending would have happened. It’s sad but true. I think America is farther ahead than other countries in terms of tolerance,”  sophomore thespian Tiernan Tunnicliffe said. “When I lived in Singapore, I used to walk around the subway stations or on the street and I didn’t see any homeless or ‘crazy people.’ One time I saw an autistic child and the parent was very embarrassed. People seem to be afraid of our differences.”lkalish@thesamohi.com