written by Walt McGough and directed by Sofya Sobolevskaya

Concept of the Play

First of all, I would like to mention some of the important points and thoughts about grief that were essential for my production and understanding the play. The first one is that grief is a certain type of trauma that is specifically related to the loss of close people. The next one is about psychological symptoms of grief, that includes dissociation and loss of personal identity. People who are experiencing grief are unable to forget and stop recalling the lost ones and therefore they are unable to perceive the outer world without them. The last one, stuck in the world between living and dead, unable to move on. Such people constantly thinking about lost ones and try to reach them again. 

It is also essential to mention the myth of 5 stages of grief. *List them*. The most important thing to consider is acceptance. It does not actually exist. There is no closure, the human brain can’t just forget the person. As it was said, grief is a trauma and this means that grief leaves a mark on our brain and it can not just absolutely disappear. In terms of my play, I would like to consider grief as a wave. That can rollback and human beings start to feel more alive. And they feel that they can continue to move on. But this pain can come back again and rush in like a huge wave. Then people feel this tough grief again and lose their connections with reality. 

So, how actually I have applied the knowledge about grief to the understanding of the play and developing its concept. First of all, Anthony is not a real person. He is a part of David’s imagination. I think David has no other close people in his life with whom he is able to share his thoughts and feelings. This is why he somehow creates Anthony and tries to understand his own emotions. Also, throughout the whole play David tries to return his daughter. He argues with Anthony that the office worker did nothing to find his daughter. David does not want to accept Daisy, the last thing that is related to his daughter. He claims that it is not her and just a flower is not enough for him.  However, ANthony makes David tell the background story of this flower: how the daughter has found it, has brought it home, has tried to take a cup and had put it in it. After such therapy, David accepts the flower and starts to go away. But in the end he asks Anthony if he has lost something big. Anthony responses: All the time. So I see at this moment that this pain caused by loss of a daughter can come back later and David needs to go through these emotions over and over. 

For staging the play, I had just one table and two chairs. Everything is going on in David’s brain and I think he feels nothing but emptiness and pain. So I don't need much stuff. Also, through the play David tries to reach his daughter in any way. In the first half of the play, David moves a lot around the table. So he can be in the light and then in the shadow. Because he can not find a place for him without his daughter. In the second half of the play, he sits in front of Anthony and starts to tell the story about Daisy. Anthony provides David with a ladder from the darkness to the bright light. The ladder is tough to use, it is narrow and long but David has to go through it.