January 16

Rehearsal January 16, 2014 - a few critiques & information.  Please comment.

Everyone	We need more energy and people noises.  Without dialogue, the beginning may slow us down if we do not keep the energy level up. Watch clumping up in scenes that call for a lot of people. LEVELS Step on line. More reaction to he cut his throat. Work on freezes Everyone needs busy work.
Paige	Louder
Cody	Make sure that you are not blocking anyone in the group meeting.
Sydney	Louder – better job being stern.  Remember that you have a tight balance between being vicious and being stern with a fake smile. Remind me to get you a watch.
Austin and Nolan	You were hired because you were the meanest of the mean people.  You have your own baggage & you are using your history to inflict pain on people because you have hurt so much in your earlier  years.
Brodie	louder
Jared	Louder – slow down.
tucker	Walk with authority
Graham	Louder Borrow my 12 Monkey’s video so you can see how he uses his hands. Brad Pitt
Nathan	Work on the line about the nurse & clothes.  You are a dirty person.

This is from another director - Bridget Close

 Warren and Williams are the hospital aides, and like all the characters in the show, they are victims of society and circumstance. The women who come to visit McMurphy visit of their own free will. They’re not paid. So this idea that the women are whores is interesting to me. Are they married? No. Do they like to Party? Yes. Are they comfortable in their own bodies? Yes. Do these descriptions make you think ‘prostitute’ or ‘college student’? In the late 1950s and early 60s, women were expected to stay in the home and take care of the children. These women in the play chose not to live that life style and therefore do not conform to society’s unwritten rules. Much like many of the patients on the ward, they are social outcasts, tagged with the label ‘unfit for society.’ This is what I love about the play, it makes you question those labels. Who is really crazy? The people on the inside or the people on the outside?”

Bridget Close insists the issues in the play are still relevant.

“We cannot fool ourselves into thinking that issues presented in this script are dated. Let’s face the facts: racism, misogyny, struggles between the American Federal Government and Native American land and resources, veteran care and social rehabilitation for mental patients, are still as relevant today as they were when Kesey wrote the book in 1959. I want to present the truth as the author saw it. I hope that this show will spark dialogue, and I am sure that it will cause a debate.”

Once  McMurphy realizes the desperate inmates need him to lead an insurrection against Nurse Ratched, the action moves quickly toward a fight-to-the-death showdown, making exciting theatre.

EVERYONE NEEDS TO READ THIS
http://www.shmoop.com/one-flew-over-cuckoos-nest/

Here's an experiment for you, Shmoopers. Go grab the following items from your house: one kazoo, one large pot, and one wooden spoon. Got 'em? Good. Now, proceed to the nearest busy street and proceed to play that kazoo and bang on that pot for all your worth. Need a song suggestion? "Ode to Joy" is always good for this kind of thing.

Chances are that, if you do this (and please, send us the videos if you do), you'll get some strange looks. Folks will cross the street. You might even hear someone call you "crazy." But think about it for a second. What does crazy really mean? Who decides who we label "crazy," and who we allow to freely walk our streets? Isn't someone banging on a pot and playing the kazoo not just as much in the world as the businesswoman who is hurrying off to her next meeting? So why all the hullabaloo, society?

That's exactly the sort of questions that are on the mind of Ken Kesey in his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. With this famous portrait of a mental institute—its rebellious patients and domineering caretakers—counter-culture icon Kesey is doing a whole lot more than just spinning a great yarn. He's asking us to stop and consider how what we call "normal" is forced upon each and every one of us. Stepping out of line, going against the grain, swimming upstream—whatever your metaphor, there is a steep price to pay for that kind of behavior. Just ask the novel's rebellious, doomed protagonist, Randle P. McMurphy.

Published in 1962, the novel tells McMurphy's tale, along with the tale of other inmates who suffer under the yoke of the authoritarian Nurse Ratched. The story is based on Kesey's own experience as an orderly in an asylum in Menlo Park, California but it's also the story of any person who has felt suffocated and confined by our rigid rules of conformity. In 1975, the novel was turned into an Academy Award-winning film, directed by Miloš Forman and starring Jack Nicholson, but don't start there. Dive right into the original novel for a vivid exploration of the thin line between sane and in-sane, as well as a chilling look at who gets to decide the difference.

  Why Should I Care?

Rules are good, right? Rules rule. Without things like stop lights and driving etiquette, we’d be one disaster-prone society. When we’re in kindergarten, we learn how to color in the lines and paint-by-numbers, because we might be told that pretty pictures are those that are neat and tidy. We have terms like, “good” and “sane” and “insane,” because these words help us keep our lives organized and mess-free. It’s like having lots of buckets with various labels, and when something comes along that's not what we expected (like when a six-year-old paints a picture of a green sky and blue grass), we just might think of it as “incorrect." No need debate it or get into messy arguments.

But One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest challenges all of that. It makes us look at who makes the rules. Now we want to know: who decides what a pretty picture looks like? Who defines what behavior is "sane" or "insane"? McMurphy helps us realize just how arbitrary "sanity" can be, especially when the poster child of sanity happens to be the one and only Nurse Ratched. So just what does it mean to be "sane" or "normal" and to have all of your ducks in a row?

How It All Goes Down

"Chief" Bromden, a schizophrenic Native American man who pretends to be deaf and dumb so that everybody ignores him, narrates One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The novel begins the morning that a new "Admission," Randle McMurphy, is introduced to an insane asylum where Chief is the longest-residing patient. McMurphy is larger than life, intelligent, and observant. He stirs up the ward immediately by introducing friendly competition – gambling – and encourages the men to rebel against the petty rules created and enforced by Nurse Ratched (often referred to as "Big Nurse").

McMurphy places a bet with the other men on the ward that he can break Nurse Ratched without: a) getting sent to the Disturbed Ward, b) getting treated with electroshock therapy, or c) being lobotomized. Slowly, McMurphy undermines Nurse Ratched’s system of control while remaining Mr. Nice Guy. She’s no fool, however. What McMurphy doesn’t understand is that Nurse Ratched has a lot of control over the situation. Since he’s a patient in the asylum, she can keep him locked up as long as she wants. As long as he’s under her rule, she has the power to send him for electroshock therapy or a lobotomy. The question is simply whether she’ll utilize her power against him or not. When McMurphy figures this out, he steps back and begins to behave – but not for long.

Just when Nurse Ratched thinks she has the upper hand, McMurphy steps back up to the plate and challenges her authority again. This time, though, he goes too far. He sneaks two prostitutes into the ward, gets everybody drunk, and also breaks into the prescription drug cabinet.

After the incident, Nurse Ratched guilt-trips all the men back into her control. Speaking of going too far, Nurse Ratched goes way, way too far. She threatens one of the patients, Billy Bibbit, by saying she’ll tell his mother about his visit with a "cheap" woman. Bibbit panics, which demoralizes the other inmates. Bibbit suddenly commits suicide after reflecting on the shame that Big Nurse is about to bring down on his head.

Of course, Nurse Ratched blames McMurphy for Bibbit’s death, which McMurphy doesn’t take so well. In fact, he’s so angry that he shatters the glass over the nurse’s station for a second time. Then, in one of the biggest scenes in the novel, McMurphy tears Nurse Ratched's shirt off and reveals her breasts. Why’s this move so important? Well, McMurphy has proved that the Big Nurse is "only" a woman: in the 1960s women were considered the "weaker sex" by men, and therefore less powerful than men on the ward. McMurphy also mangles Nurse Ratched physically, choking her badly.

The momentum of the crazy situation allows Nurse Ratched to send McMurphy upstairs for a lobotomy. When McMurphy returns to the ward, he’s a vegetable. Chief realizes he can’t let McMurphy suffer for years in the prison of his body. That night, he smothers McMurphy to death. Chief then escapes from the hospital after breaking a window. His getaway is only possible because of McMurphy, who previously had taught Chief how to lift a heavy panel in the tub-room and break the windows. Chief reaches the highway, where he catches a ride with a Mexican guy and heads to Canada and freedom.

 

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I'm going to give you background on some of the characters.  This is from Spark Notes.

Randle P McMurphy

McMurphy is larger than life, a man destined to change the asylum forever. Whether he’s a psychopath or not, we’ll never know. Regardless, he sure is smart and he sure is likeable and he sure does give the patients the ability to seize back the power that Nurse Ratched has stolen from them with her petty little rules and her many small cruelties. Though McMurphy has the opportunity to conform to the rules and save himself, he ultimately chooses to fight for the men on the ward. He recognizes the power that Nurse Ratched wields but doesn’t seem to understand the danger she represents to himself until somebody points it out.

For awhile, McMurphy does conform in order to save himself. However, after Cheswick commits suicide, McMurphy realizes that Nurse Ratched’s control is a life and death matter. At that point he steps up his rebellion. Punishment with electroshock therapy only serves to strengthen his will and preserve his spirit from Nurse Ratched’s manipulation. His strength in the face of electroshock therapy makes him an even more powerful symbol to the men on the ward. Though the patients are afraid for him and know that Nurse Ratched will do everything she can to get the better of McMurphy, he again doesn’t recognize the danger he’s in. He wants to stick around until he can help Billy overcome his fear of women. This is partly ignorance on McMurphy’s part and also partly self-sacrifice. By this time, he has a better understanding of the potential danger to himself but he’s still confident that he can beat the game.

Although he seems to be winning for a time, Nurse Ratched has the upper hand. He loses it when Billy Bibbit commits suicide and he tries to strangle Nurse Ratched to death. When McMurphy is sent to the hospital after attempting to strangle Nurse Ratched, he returns a different man – part of his brain and all of his spirit are gone.

McMurphy shows up in the ward one morning and moves around among the men, both Acutes and Chronics, introducing himself and avoiding the shower required upon admission to the ward.

He finds out who’s top dog – Harding – and says he intends to be the big man on the ward from now on. Their showdown is over Eisenhower – whoever voted for him the most is the craziest guy there. McMurphy wins.

Nurse Ratched approaches him to say he’s being difficult about his shower but that he must follow the rules. He responds that in his experience, the only time somebody reminds him about the rules is if they think he doesn’t intend to follow them.

In his first afternoon group meeting, McMurphy observes how Nurse Ratched pits all the men against one another. After the meeting is over, he describes it as a "pecking party" and suggests that Nurse Ratched is leading all the men to peck each other’s balls off. She’s emasculating them.

McMurphy makes a bet with the guys that he can break Nurse Ratched without destroying himself.

After his morning shower, McMurphy shows up in only a towel. He claims his clothes were stolen. Nurse Ratched finds out his old clothes were taken away and his green asylum uniform hasn’t yet arrived but she’s furious to see him half-naked in the hall.

McMurphy tries to get Nurse Ratched to turn the music in the day room off, but she politely tells him that this wouldn’t be fair to the Chronics, who can’t relieve their boredom through card games the way the Acutes can. So McMurphy suggests that the Acutes could meet in the tub room to play cards, but she says there’s not enough staff for it.

During the next afternoon meeting, the doctor says he’s had a long talk with McMurphy and he thinks that a carnival would be good for the guys. Nurse Ratched clearly doesn’t like the idea and says it must be discussed in a staff meeting first.

McMurphy then brings up the tub room again, with the doctor’s support, who says they have plenty of staff for the tub room plan. So McMurphy has scored a point against Nurse Ratched.

McMurphy’s next idea is switching the cleaning schedule so the men can watch the World Series in the afternoon. When he can’t get enough guys to back him up, he tells them later that they’re gutless.

He brings the vote up again at the next meeting. Nurse Ratched agrees to put the matter to a vote, even though she’s furious. All the Acutes raise their hands – twenty of them. But she says that that’s not a majority since the Chronics didn’t raise their hands, so the schedule will not be changed.

McMurphy goes around to the Chronics, begging one of them to raise their hand. But, the Chronics don’t get it – until Chief raises his hand.

The next afternoon, McMurphy goes and turns the television to the baseball game. Nurse Ratched turns the television off from the nurses’ station. McMurphy watches the blank television in protest, as if the game were really on. The Acutes join him and they watch the blank TV screen.

The afternoon meetings become a gripe session and McMurphy doesn’t even need to lead off.

McMurphy finds out that Nurse Ratched has the power to keep him there in the asylum as long as he wants, and that changes his perspective. At the next meeting, when Cheswick brings up the issue of cigarettes, McMurphy is silent. He doesn’t back Cheswick up, even though Cheswick is sent to Disturbed ward.

McMurphy sees how Frederickson and Sefelt need their medication to prevent seizures but it rots their gums out. They’re damned if they do take medicine and damned if they don’t. This has special resonance for him in terms of his rebellion against Nurse Ratched.

McMurphy discovers that most of the men are in the ward voluntarily – he’s one of two Acutes who have actually been committed. When he discovers this, he’s astounded and asks why the men stick around. That’s when he realizes that most of the men are too afraid to be out in the "real world."

At the next meeting, Nurse Ratched plays her hand, thinking McMurphy is sufficiently cowed this time. She says the men are to be punished for their little rebellion.

McMurphy stands up, walks over to where she’s sitting, and busts his hand through the Nurses’ Station window.

Nurse Ratched leaves him alone for a long time after that, and he begins to plan a fishing fieldtrip for all the men.

When McMurphy discovers that Chief can hear and speak after all, he signs Chief up for the fishing trip. Because Chief thinks he’s a small man now, McMurphy offers to help him "get big" again.

The fishing trip is successful and McMurphy manages to get laid.

McMurphy and Chief get into a fight with the orderlies in order to protect Rub-a-Dub George. They’re sent to the Disturbed ward where they undergo electroshock therapy.

McMurphy becomes a small legend because he refuses to admit he was wrong, even though it means perpetual punishment with electroshock therapy.

Two weeks later, when he’s back on the ward, McMurphy manages to sneak Candy and Sandy on the ward. They have a major ward party, where they all get drunk and Billy and McMurphy go to bed with their two prostitutes.

When they’re discovered, Nurse Ratched shames Billy so bad that he commits suicide. McMurphy is so angry that he smashes a glass door and assaults Nurse Ratched.

When McMurphy returns from the hospital, he’s no longer McMurphy – he’s had a lobotomy.

Chief smothers McMurphy to death in his hospital bed

Chief Bromden

Chief is the narrator of the story and for most of the book, he’s just an observer. He watches how McMurphy interacts with the men, what McMurphy is trying to do, and how the staff reacts. Because Chief pretends to be deaf and unable to speak, people talk freely around him, allowing him to learn their secrets. Although he appears powerless, he actually has a lot of power because of all the knowledge he’s gained through observation and listening in on conversations.

Chief has a theory about the way the world works: it’s all a great big machine (called the Combine) and everybody is just part of this machine. The parts that are broken are sent to this hospital to be "fixed" again – to be wired back into this machine. He doesn’t want to be part of it. He resists it and part of the resistance is pretending to be deaf and speechless.

McMurphy is so charismatic, and so outside of the Combine system, that he gives Chief hope that life doesn’t have to mean fitting into the machine that is the Combine. Eventually, Chief reveals that he can talk and hear just fine. He tries to protect McMurphy by explaining how the system works, and to what lengths they (the people who promote the Combine, like Nurse Ratched) will go to prevent McMurphy from gaining power. But, McMurphy is too confident. Chief tries to protect McMurphy again when he gets into a fight with the black orderlies. And he tries to protect McMurphy again when they go to the Disturbed ward and are subjected to electroshock therapy. But ultimately, he fails to protect the man he has come to see as a savior. When McMurphy finally returns to the ward as a lobotomized vegetable, Chief frees him from the physical prison of his body by smothering him with a pillow. Because of McMurphy, Chief finally has the courage to break free from the hospital escapes through a window after breaking it the way McMurphy trained him to.

Chief plays the role of eyes and ears in the novel, as well as the one who guides us into and out of this strange, mysterious, crazy world. Chief hides from the orderlies so he doesn’t have to get shaved. He knows when he’s shaved, they use a little machine to get inside your head and make you conform to the system.

He catches a ride with a Mexican who lends him a jacket to cover his asylum uniform, along with ten bucks for food.

Before he heads to Canada, Chief thinks he’ll visit the place where he grew up.

Nurse Ratched

Nurse Ratched desires order, and she wants complete power, so she manipulates her patients and the staff to do fulfill her desires. As the head nurse and as a woman with many connections both inside and outside of the hospital, she is able to maneuver things so that most situations fit her expectations. If she needs to, she uses the force of her hatred to get things done. Though she smiles a lot and talks sweetly, she’s definitely not a kind or charming woman. She is, however, a woman with strong will and a fanaticism for control. She pursues power with intensity and is very successful at getting people to do what she wants.

Although Nurse Ratched is an antagonist of the worst kind in this book, even Chief knows that she’s simply the human face of the Combine – machine that Chief imagines is society. In other words, according to Chief, the system is larger than Nurse Ratched; she is only part of the system. She happens to be the patients’ direct link to the mechanical system, but she is not the system itself. This puts Nurse Ratched and her power into perspective. However, even with her little amount of power, she is destructive. In the short timeframe of the book, she destroys three men – two commit suicide and one is lobotomized. She gets what she wants and feels no guilt about how it’s accomplished.