DEVELOPMENT
Tony Sutera in Development performed at Vanguard University. Photo by Susie Hudson
Synopsis
In an isolated medical clinic in the Mojave Desert, a dying man is visited by the two sons he abandoned, twenty years ago. This reunion proves more Pandora’s Box, than reconciliation, releasing a lineage of madness and mayhem, with only the slimmest chance at redemption. A contemporary drama, “Development” reveals the nature and tragedy of schizophrenia, its secrets and symptoms, and the potentially healing powers of family.
Troy Iwata and Michael Fidalgo in Development performed at Vanguard University. Photo by Susie Hudson.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
In the spring of 2009, Sue Berkompas, Chair of the Theatre Arts Department at Vanguard University of Southern California, asked me to write a play about mental illness. In our preliminary discussions, she suggested that the script be focused on a family, rightly contending that a “disease of the mind” carries consequences for every one of its members; however, given the stigmas attached, it’s an issue that is often swept under the proverbial rug and hidden from public view. “Development” is the result of those early talks: a contemporary drama, steeped in the tenets of Greek tragedy, designed to enlighten and educate and hold a mirror up to the shadowy world of mental illness. That “shadowy world” was clarified for me through my own research, as I read upwards of fifty books on the subject, before landing on the “family” that Sue suggested: Walter, an aging patriarch who abandoned his two sons, Cliff and Travis, twenty years earlier, after experiencing a paranoid breakdown. This breakdown, brought on by the auditory hallucinations he hears, has led him to a shack in the middle of the Mojave Desert, where he is destined to spend the rest of his days. When he turns up on his deathbed in a medical clinic in the tiny hamlet of Mecca, located on the Salton Sea, Cliff and Travis are notified, and they converge upon the desert to say their goodbyes and make peace with their father, a reunion that will carry dramatic ramifications for both of their futures.
Michael Fidalgo and Jordan Laemlenn in Development at Vanguard University. Photo by Susie Hudson.
Stylistically, Development utilizes a number of characters to tell its story, some based in the reality of the play, some who represent the auditory hallucinations of Walter and Cliff, (including the resurrected George Armstrong Custer, a figure of some importance in a pivotal scene at the Valley of the Little Bighorn). In the Arizona and California productions of the play, these “hallucinated characters” as a manifestation of the altered reality of its characters, resulted in a number of design elements and staging choices that contributed significantly to the mood of the piece.