By Sylvia Martinsdóttir, Year 12
Room 202 was the IB Theatre year 12s first performance of the year. It was a collaborative creation that poses the question: what is real and what is not?
The show was inspired the absurdist play This Is a Chair written by Caryl Churchill. The second play that was an inspiration to them was The Man Who by Peter Brook. The play is based on the studies and findings of Oliver Sacks, a neurologist who worked with mental patients.
Room 202 introduces the idea of the doctor and the patient but the audience wonders, who is who? At times, it is almost impossible to distinguish between the two.
The name of the play, Room 202, is supposed to mimic psychiatric hospitals and the classification of the rooms there.
The actors choose to treat the audience as patients so in the beginning of the play each member of the audience was given a patient number, a questionnaire and a program of the show. The play started of in the foyer and then due to the use of promenade style theatre the audience was lead all around the Centre des Arts to see the 13 scenes of the play. The promenade resulted in quite an interactive show, where at one point, one of the patients was offering flowers to the audience.
The sets were plain but suited the show well and they had even put pictures relating to the show in the fire escape so during the transitions between sets the audience could enjoy them.
In total there were two shows, and, unsurprisingly, the actors all gave great and memorable performances. It was wonderful to see how passionate all the actors in the program are. The audience was pleased with the performance, some even went to see it twice! At the end of the show the actors answered questions of the audience and Mr. Timm gave one of his cute little speeches. The questionnaires were given back filled with comments and answers.
Seeing a play in the Centre des Arts was a nice change from the usual musicals and I definitely hope to see more from this group in the future!
