7th Play: Beyond Therapy

Christopher Durang's play Beyond Therapy is histerical because the characters say things that people would normally think and not say out loud. His play can almost be considered non-realistic at certain points. 

The Story: The characters Bruce and Prudence meet through a personals ad, but their date doesn’t go so well.  He expresses emotions and likes to cry.  Prudence doesn’t think men should cry “unless something falls on them.” He has a male lover.  “I’m bisexual,” he tells her.  She’s not sure; they talk at cross purposes some more, and then end up throwing water in each others’ faces. We then see them talk about their meeting with their respective psychiatrists.  Hers is a macho pig who once seduced her and keeps talking about his prowess.  He refuses to say much, but occasionally bursts into inappropriate anger.  His is a warm, encouraging woman who embraces her patients, talks through her Snoopy doll and believes in expressing all feelings no matter what.  She encourages Bruce to cry, and on hearing he threw water at Prudence she cries out “Good for you! Ruff, ruff, ruff!”  The “ruff ruff” is her barking for Snoopy.

Somehow Bruce and Prudence meet a second time, surprisingly overcome their initial loathing, and start to maybe like one another.  But then she has to meet the male lover Bob; and listen to Bob’s crazy mother on the phone.  And the whole thing comes to a chaotic end in a mad restaurant scene where screaming and shootings take place, and Bruce and Prudence almost get together, but don’t quite. They do like one another though, and end by humming softly together their favorite song, Someone to Watch Over Me.

I ended up using the scene where Bruse and prudence meet for my Directing 1 class. Sammie Davis played Prudence and Robert Roeloff played Bruce. Although I made some cuts to the scene to keep it within a certain time frame the scene did not lose its meat. At the end of the scene I had Sammie throw two glasses of water at Robert. With the first throw she actually accidentally missed which added a lot of comedy to the piece. I made some of my own blocking here and there but it was really exciting to watch the scene I chose be filmed and I am excited to retrieve the link for the scene from my director from the film department so that I can post it on my blog!