Byzantium Dreams - Act One

The first act of a play set in a mental institute. A satire.

It’s midnight, the moon is casting a dull glow on centre stage while the rest is in darkness; the audience cannot see the rest of the stage. Muffled sounds filter through. After a few seconds SEBASTIAN enters stage right. He is tall and thin, dressed in dark clothes (the audience cannot properly make out what he is wearing). He is in his early twenties and has short, dark hair. He looks towards the audience confidently.

Sebastian: Insanity, a deranged state of mind. People seem to think that insanity is only present in the mentally unstable, the psychopaths. But I've seen it. I've seen it in the faces of everyone. The lawyer, the doctor, the w***e. Insanity possesses all of us, it takes away our ability to see and think. It eats at our senses until we become belligerent. Until it is all we are. It is not a question of whether or not someone is insane, but whether or not they are willing to let it take hold. These doctors think they have the cure; they think they can fix the few of us that have let it take over. But no one can. No doctor or scientist can measure and quantify the instability of the human mind. And to think they can proves they are that which they are trying to cure: insane.

The stage suddenly fills with light and reveals the entire scene. We are in a hospital; DR FINNICK dressed in a lab coat stands with his back to the audience looking at a chart, a nurse is preparing a needle. Sebastian still stands centre stage but his demeanour has change and he is now looking at the ground and fidgeting; we can now see he is dressed in dark blue hospital clothes. Two orderlies enter stage left and pull him gently towards a chair. Finnick turns towards Sebastian and talks to him calmly, with a patronising tone. He is in his early thirties and has a tidy appearance. His movements are very deliberate and precise. Finnick’s expressions barely show any kind of emotion, and when they do they seem very staged and solid.

Finnick: It seems that you have become a lot more aggressive these past few weeks Sebastian, would you care to explain why?

Sebastian: I don’t want to be here. I don’t see the point in being dragged around and prodded with needles. It’s not like it’s helping me in any way.

Finnick: Of course it’s helping you; we wouldn’t be doing it if it wasn’t to help you.

Sebastian: (scoffs) Yeah of course you want to help me. (laughs quietly).

Finnick: (looks at the orderly) Was that sarcasm? (the orderly nods) You know you are here so we can help you Sebastian. Why on Earth would you think otherwise?

Sebastian: (looks directly at Finnick)  Because drugging me until I'm docile enough to be left alone doesn't really make it seem like you're trying to help me. You just want us all to be quiet little zombies so you can go carry on with your comfortable life, in your comfortable house, with your comfortable family; and continue to rake in money for all the difficulties we crazies cause you.

Finnick: (his tone and expression become slightly aggressive)Now you listen here, your childish conspiracy theories are what got you put in this place �"

Sebastian: - I thought I was here because I tried to kill myself. (looks at Finnick darkly and smiles, victorious)

Finnick: (to the orderly) Give him a benzodiazpam and put him in his room. (exits stage left).

Sebastian: (becomes fidgety in his seat and leans away from the orderly as he brings a needle) Don’t you dare! You son of a b- (Sebastian is cut short as the orderly injects him. The lights dim).

 

Scene Two

We are in a hospital ward, there are six beds either side of the stage with a walkway through the centre. Four of the beds are occupied by sleeping patients. On the sixth sits and ANGELA staring blankly into the audience. Her hair is messy and she holds her arms to her chest. She is sixteen years old.

Angela: Tick tock. Tick. Tick. Tock. Tick. (she pauses for a while and breathes heavily) My name is Angela. I am sixteen. I am a patient at South Bank Sanatorium. I am here because I hurt myself. Tick tock. Tick. Tick. Tock. Tick. My name is Angela. I am sixteen. I am a patient at South Bank Sanatorium. I am here because I have catatonic schizophrenia. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. My name is Angela… (she sits still ands stares quietly at the audience)

 A nurse enters from the rear of the stage. She is in her late twenties; it appears as though she has tried to dress smart but the rigors of the day have made this attempt futile. She tries to move Angela but she keeps trying to push herself back into the same position. The nurse sounds agitated and her speech is interrupted by Angela’s movements.

Nurse: Angela, please. I’m trying to- please just let me. Oh for god’s sake Angela. Please just- Some help please!

(an orderly comes to the bed and helps the nurse push Angela down. Angela starts to panic)

Angela: No. No. No. No. No. I have to- No. No! I need t- (she is stopped short as the nurse injects her. She very quickly becomes immobile and the nurse tucks her in to bed and addresses the orderly)

Nurse: I wish, for just one day, these people would stop being so damn resistant. I mean bloody hell! All I was doing was trying to get her to lie down in a bed. A bed for Christ’s sake! It’s not made of nails!

Finnick enters looking slightly agitated. He walks over to the nurse and hands her a clip board.

Finnick: I need you to get a room ready for our new patient. He’s waiting in treatment room two so as soon as the room is ready get an orderly to help you take him there. Is that understood?

Nurse: No offence Dr Finnick, but why do I need an orderly to help me? I’ve moved patients on my own before.

Finnick: Mr. Tailor is quite a strong man suffering from homicidal delusions…and from the notes his previous doctor sent to me, you seem like just his type. I would rather you have an orderly assist you for your own safety.

The nurse nods and exits.

Angela:  Tick tock. Tick. Tick.

Finnick: Hello Angela. How are you doing today? (walks over to Angela’s bed)

Angela: G-good. I want to- I want to sit up and…(Angela’s voice trails off as if she is distracted by something)

Finnick (to audience): It’s sad really. Some of them have no hope. As a medical professional I would obviously like to help all of them, but that just isn’t the case. For people like Angela, there is no cure. There is no kind of medication that can fix her. So all we can do is make her comfortable, take care of her and learn. It sounds inhumane, but the best thing we can do with cases like hers is to simply study her. Figure out what makes her tick, and what makes her act the way she does. And then we can try and fix the next person that comes along with a similar disorder. This is the perfect place for an academic such as myself, I can learn so much about these people by simply talking to them. And what I can’t learn from talking I can learn from brain scans and other tests. (laughs) Well that makes them sound like lab rats.

Lights fade out and the stage is completely black.

 

Scene Three

The lights slowly fade up to reveal Gregory. They remain dim throughout the scene.
Gregory is strapped to a chair that is behind a table. He is wearing a hospital gown and is smirking evilly. His eyes fix upon various members of the audience then switch to another person. The nurse enters to secure his straps. She looks nervous and is leaning away from him.

Gregory: How strange, it’s normally me strapping beautiful women down, not the other way around. (he laughs maniacally) You are exquisite, I must say. You know, I’ve always had a thing for blonde women. Reminds me of my mother. You should meet her, she’s a b***h. (the nurse backs away and his gaze locks on her eyes) Are you a b***h too? (the nurse shakes her head) Of course you are, all you bleeders are. I wonder how difficult it is to rip open a woman’s ribcage. Is it like trying to claw open a rock? But I bet these hands (looks down at his hands and flexes them) could do it. These hands are surprisingly strong. They could crush your windpipe in seconds. Would you like me to show you? (laughs darkly. The nurse exits and Gregory fixes his gaze on a specific woman in the audience). Oh I could do so much to you. I have so many fucked up thoughts and demons wriggling around inside my skull it’s going to explode if I don’t get to play soon. You act terrified, but I know. I know you want it really. (starts to sound aggressive) I know what you’re thinking. I know what you think you know about me! (his gaze flickers between audience members) I could do so much. I could be glorious. I can see it now. My name in the headlines as they find another body. Another b***h. Blood oozes from the gashes in her torso. Eyes paralysed with fear. (laughs darkly) Glorious.

Finnick enters stage right. He pulls out a notepad and sits near Gregory.

Finnick: Good morning Mr. Tailor.

Gregory: Please, call me Gregory.

Finnick: (smiles politely and nods) Now Gregory, I want to talk about the delusions you’ve been having. Can you describe them to me?

Gregory: I kill them. I kill them all.

Finnick: Who do you mean by ‘them all’? People who has wronged you?

Gregory: (laughs) I mean all the bleeders. The b*****s.

Finnick: Women?

Gregory: Yes. The women.

Finnick: Why do you refer to women in such derogatory terms?

Gregory: Why do you think?

Finnick: Well, from my stand-point, it seems that you have no respect for females. Is this because of something that’s happened to you in the past? A heart break perhaps?

Gregory: No. I have never been heart broken. I am just a monster.

Finnick: Now, I don’t think you should call yourself such things. You are just ill and-

Gregory: No doctor. I am not ill. I am a monster. I want to let the animalistic side takeover and rip the world apart. And I don’t feel bad about it. I don’t want your help. I want to give in and become the monster. I want to get out of my cage and let loose.

Lights dim and stage turns black.

Scene Four

Sebastian is sitting in a room alone. He stares blankly in to the distance, tapping his foot on the ground. He seems agitated and his speech is full of pauses.

Sebastian: Tomorrow is Thursday. Visiting day. When all the families come to pretend they care about their precious little crazies. Like tigers in a zoo; so deadly and terrifying but docile behind our bars. They come to watch, to observe. They stare into our drug-glazed eyes and tell us to get better. They tell us they care. But they’re all the same. All they want is to keep us chained up in this cess pool, withering away and turning into barbarian. Sponges in a lake soaking up pain killers and anti-depressants like crystal drops from the fountain of life. Roses poisoned by the stench of antiseptic, left to fade and die. Mollycoddled by limp pillows and scratchy blankets. Chess pieces tossed manipulated by school children. Pounded into submission by a dreary routine of injections and pandering. These sickening plague doctors ferry us around the halls like cattle being herded towards the slaughterhouse. They display us like prized paintings, locked away in elegant frames to hide the fraying edges. We are sat in front of our potential buyers to read from a script of well-wishes and false lines of progress. After the show we are taken back to our cells to wallow in our own self-pity and contemplate the woes of this small world.

Lights switch to another section of the stage and Angela is sitting still in a chair staring out over the audience. Her speech is emotionless and soft.

Angela: Visiting day. I like seeing my family. I like to know how everyone is and what everyone is doing. I have to live through them you see. (starts to make a ‘chugging’ sound like a train, this continues for a few seconds) When my sister tells me about her boyfriends or school, it’s like I’m living it myself. And my parents stories about work and the rest of my family make me feel like I’m there. Who needs to go outside? (she pauses for a while. Eventually she begins to cry and her voice becomes jumpy) Who needs to live? Who needs to be a normal person? I mean, it’s not like I’m missing anything…stuck in this shell. Stuck in this lonely, painful status quo. Waiting for the next episode, the next ice age. When my body becomes a prison and switching position is like walking on a floor made of fire and glass fragments. Tick, tick, tock. It- it’s like my brain is evil. Like it enjoys torturing me and tying me down to my bed for days upon days. (becomes hysterical) I just want to be normal. I just want to be able to function like a normal human being! I’ll cut my arms, I’ll burn my skin, I will do anything. Anything to feel alive again. Anything to escape this hell.

Lights switch again to another section of the stage to show the Nurse sitting on a chair, legs crossed. She looks stressed.

Nurse: A mental institute. That’s right, I work in a f*****g mental institute. All day I have to deal with psychopaths running around breaking things and depressed idiots wandering around aimlessly. I seem heartless, I know. But no one thinks about all this from my perspective: day in, day out I have to take care of these people. I have to try to calm down the lunatics and clean up the freaks that piss themselves. So what if I’m a bit liberal with a hypodermic needle? It’s the only thing that shuts these crazies up. I used to care. And I mean really care. I was so polite and nice and passionate. But I’ve been doing this for so long that I’ve just become cold, lazy, heartless. You can’t do this job without detaching yourself. You can’t sit in a room with a clinically depressed teenager begging you to help him end it all and feel sorry for him. Nothing would function properly. There would be no order, no sanity, in this place if everyone cared. So I do what I have to do to stop myself ending up in a place like this: I stop giving a s**t and get on with my job. It’s just a job. It’s not like anything I do makes a difference anyway. It doesn’t matter whether or not I try to be loving and kind. It doesn’t matter if I talk to them. I’m just a nurse. I’m just the random woman that tucks them into bed and cleans up after them.  I can’t help it if they’re insane, it’s not my fault. Why should I have to mother them? It’s not like they would notice. They’re all off in their little fantasy worlds, I’m just a shadow. I’m invisible.

They lighting switches to reveal Mr Potter; he is sitting on the floor cross legged, looking very cheery. He is a young man with messy hair and a slight frame.

Mr Potter: It’s all a bit odd isn’t it? The weather, I mean. One second it’s raining and the next it’s as sunny as a biscuit. One day, I think I shall inquire as to why the weather is so peculiar. Why the fuzzy clouds sometimes spit out water and sometimes disappear all-together. The doctors say that it’s because sometimes I’m sad and sometimes I’m happy. Well, it’s sunny now so I guess I must be quite the cheery little git. I do hate it when it rains though. The water goes everywhere, soaks through the floors boards and makes my clothes all clingy. It ruins everything. It makes everything dark and lonely. Even the moon looks sad, and I’ve always thought her to be quite a content character. But I suppose this is all beside the point, because it’s sunny now. The sky is blue and the sun is glowing like an orange sitting on a table cloth. Table cloths are quite useless really. If you’re going to spill something, wouldn’t you rather it be on an easily cleaned surface like wood as opposed to a stubborn and absorbent fabric like linen? It’s all highly illogical. Like hand sanitizer. Where do all the bacteria corpses go once they’ve had the life sucked out of them by some strange concoction of chemicals? Do they just fall off?

The stage is suddenly flooded with light as we move on to the next scene.