When I first conceived my ideas for Micro, I had the idea of doing a stage version of Aronofsky's 'Requiem for a dream' using extracts from the screenplay and focusing entirely on Sara Goldfarb's descent into Amphetamine Narcosis. I wanted the play to start off naturalistically and then become more abstract as she becomes more and more addicted. Meeting the first years for the first time, I began planning who would be most suitable for what roles. However, I later found out that I was not allowed to create a micro based on a screenplay.
I then had to completely rethink what I was to direct for Micro. I then remembered a play I had seen in 2009 called 'The Pillowman'. It is a naturalistic play about a writer called Katurian living in a totalitarian state, being interrogated by Police over the content of his short stories and how they appear to have inspired a recent string of child murders. I began to conceive how I could perform extracts of it in 20 minutes. My first idea was to do the first twenty minutes of the play, but the problem was that this section was purely backstory to prepare for the later plot. I thought that this would be boring and unfulfilling. I went through the rest of the play trying to find a twenty minute extract that would work well on its own, but I couldn't find any. But throughout the play, Kautrian tells 4 entire short stories: The Writer and the Writer's Brother, The Little Green Pig, The Pillowman and The Little Jesus. I thought that it could be interesting to exhibit these stories in a non-naturalistic way using four actors; one narrator for each story.
To make it easier for my cast to understand, I typed up the stories myself adding stage directions and giving lines that are said by characters within the story to actor's other than the narrator. After I did a word count, I estimated that if I did all 4 stories, it would be about twenty-five to thirty minutes long. I also had an idea of creating a Meta-narrative, so I decided to cut The Little Green Pig as it did not fit in. My ideas on the Meta-narrative changed quite often, so I will only write about my final concept. I decided that 'The Little Jesus' and 'The Writer and The Writer's Brother' would be closely linked by the content and style while 'The Pillowman' would be completely separate. I divided the first two stories into Act 1 and 'The Pillowman' as Act 2.
Act 1 has a centralised theme of parents abusing their children in a way that is pointless and reminiscent of Grimm's fairytales. I wanted the stories to be narrated by one narrator with vocal input from actor's playing characters in the story. The other actors would overplay the characters in the story to a comic degree while music that was highly unsettling played. I understood that this play was a black comedy, and I thought that the best way to express the humour was to take it as seriously as possible. That way, actions and lines that are so unusual or bizarre become funny. I was initially unsure of what order to perform them in, but then I remembered a quote about the Israel/Palestine conflict: "The oppressed have become the oppressors." I thought it might be interesting if the actress playing The Little Jesus becomes the abusive foster mother in 'The Writer and The Writer's brother.' I also remembered a psychological theory that abused children grow up to marry someone like their parents. As I had the same actor playing the abusive father in both stories, my play would have alluded to this too. However, I knew that these thing were not the most important things to focus on, so I did not emphasise them.
I wanted Act 2 to focus on the story more than the action and have a much slower pace. In the original script, Katurian is telling the story to his brother Michal. Michal often makes small interjections in the story. To make use of the other three actors, I decided to split all of Michal's lines between them. I noticed that I could put all of Michal's lines into three groups: accepting, declining and correcting. I decided one of these groups to each actor and would have them create a character based on those groups. I wanted to use piano music that had a slow and uplifting feel, which would greatly contrast the music from Act 1.
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