Let's start from the beginning 4th post for Idiot Savant

Where do I begin? Let's just start out by saying that this play was weird and eccentric. Ever since the opening scene when we saw Wilem Defoe's character walking across stage, I was just in shock of how odd the play had opened up and everything from that point on still continued to amaze me. The play opened with the Idiot Savant walking with a fake bird in a cage and what seemed to be a stick in his mouth. The play continued on and we saw the first lady appear on stage and begin to ask the Idiot Savant questions. I do not remember what these questions were, but I do remember what her motions were when she asked them. She also kept attempting to move from number to number around the room. I was completely in shock for the first few minutes until it all started to finally click for me. What helped me greatly was the fact that Wilem Defoe's microphone broke on stage. This gave me a minute to collect my thoughts and to see if they actually made sense.

My ideas about this play all keep the idea in mind that this entire play is about language. That is the main point that they all connect back to. Also, since we had done previous assignments in class about being specific when using language, those exercises, I felt, helped me out greatly. It allowed me to understand what is important in what is being said and to be able to filter out all the language that was unnecessary. So here it is, my take on the play Idiot Savant.

First of as a side note which I will get to later on, the two women on stage were his alter egos. The first lady was nice and the second lady was more stern and mean. Almost as though they were playing the role of the angel and devil on his shoulders, telling him what to do and constantly toying with him, leaving him unable to make a decision. As the play opened up, I believe the first lady was either on stage when the play began or she entered onto the stage not too long after the play had begun. Either way, from the very beginning she seemed to be trying to draw stuff out of him, asking questions and trying to get information from him. She was the clear thinking level headed side of his conscious, while the other lady was more demanding and was always in a bad mood. The point here is that when the first lady was on stage she seemed to be asking a lot of questions and through these questions she was hoping that he would open up to her and allow her to get some answers. The stick that was in his mouth in the opening of the play, which prevented him from talking, represented the answer that she was indeed looking for. This is because we witnessed her quite a few times, trying to make a grab at it and to get it away from him. The fact that it was tied to a string around his neck conveyed to us that it was important to him (his thoughts) and that he was not going to let it get away from him easily. This is why the lady had to work so hard and ask so many questions in order to try and get it away from him. The number on the walls to the both sides of the stage represented her progress in getting the answers and knowledge out of him. The higher the numbers were that she was at, the closer it she was to getting the knowledge that she desired. I realized all of this when she began to move around in sequential order. she began at number one and only reached number two. This was to show how her being soft with him was going to get her nowhere. She was asking the wrong questions, just like in the clip from the Pink Panther, when the inspector asked if the man's dog bit. The man replied no and when the dog bit the inspector the man simply told him that it was not his dog. I will post the link to the video clip at the end of this blog post so it will be more clear. From all of this I am hinting at the fact that the numbers represented how close she was getting to him. The first lady never did get very far and seemed to always gravitate more to the right side of the stage and towards the lower numbers. The second lady on the other hand, appeared from behind the table and next to the number four. This, as Jordan pointed out after the show, represented that she was going to get no farther than number four. While I agree with this, I also think that it was meant to show how much stronger she was than the first lady who appeared on stage. Both because of the table, which I will explain in my next blog post, and because she was more demanding of the Idiot Savant. Because of her being so much stronger, she was able to get closer to him and farther in her questioning. This was all in the same hopes that Wilem Defoe's character would open up to her and reveal the answer. When I write about the Idiot Savant opening up to the women, I do not mean discussing it with them, I mean that he will be able to come to reason over a decision because these women are not real, they are merely his alter egos being portrayed on the stage. Also, he will not be revealing thins to them, by this I mean that he will discover the answer that he is searching for. The Idiot Savant is merely arguing with himself and searching within himself to find what he is indeed looking for.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXn2QVipK2o