Handlers? 12th post for Idiot Savant

It is almost as though they were his handlers for the performance.

This was one of the lines that I wrote in my 6th post for this assignment. I already explained what they did during the play and now I just have one more thing to add on pertaining to what they did. As we were leaving the show one of the men with the funny hats walked off stage and almost directed us out of the theater. Now throughout all of this he remained in character and completely still. The point of this was to convey to us how the show was not just a performance but that it was real life. It is almost as though we were at a zoo and we had just seen a performance by the animals and all of the handlers were directing people out. The Idiot Savant was the animal and we were the observers. I only realized this because I found it odd how the man directing us out stayed in character the whole time. Also, by having him come off the stage and remain in character it shows how it was not acting. Everything that we saw was supposed to be real life. This was a way of "landing the plane" for everyone in the audience.

The end of the play, 11th post for Idiot Savant

The end of this performance was a happy time for me, mainly because it meant that this show was finally over. Even though it was only about an hour and a half long, it felt like hours for me. The end of this play though was pretty obvious for me since it finished off most the my thoughts about the play itself. At the end we see only the Idiot Savant left on stage by himself looking around frantically for the duck, aka his sanity. He is left alone on stage at the end to represent how everyone else was a figment of his imagination (except for the people with the hats as I have mentioned in one of my previous posts). The last motion that the Idiot Savant has in this performance is him falling to the ground and landing precisely on the number five. The significance here is to show how that the performance is over and how he is complete. The whole point of this performance was to show us how he was in search of something. From the beginning of the play he was arguing with both himself and his alter egos trying to get information out of himself. At the end he is complete because he has achieved his goal; he has found whatever is was that he was looking for. As I mentioned before the point of the number was to show how close the people were to getting information out of him and by having him fall on the number five was to show how only he was able to get the information. When I write information, I mean understand what it was that was concerning him. By all of this I mean that he achieved his goal.

Watch out! 10th post for Idiot Savant

WATCH OUT!

That was the loud and obnoxious sound that was played over and over throughout the play. When it was first played I actually did "watch out". I thought that something drastic was about to happen on stage. A few days after the play I realized that it had been played, not to anticipate something drastic that was about to happen, but to represent a reoccurring theme. This was all made clear to me one morning when I was waiting to pick up my friend to drive him to school. I had been listening to the radio waiting for him to get in the car when all of a sudden I heard a very familiar tune. I am not sure what exactly the song was called, but it is the one that is constantly played in all of those Sam Adam's commercials. When the song came on I just thought that I was going to hear the advertisement for Sam Adam's beer, but when I realized that what was playing was a real song, I noticed what the producers of that commercial had been trying to do. They played the same song over and over in every commercial to get people to remember what was being advertised. This was so every time that song was played, whether it was for the commercial or not, people would think of their product. They wanted to make their product stick. This is what the producers of Idiot Savant did, they used the same copy of the woman's voice screaming "watch out!" over and over to make a reoccurring theme stick with the audience. This was so every time that the sound was played, we would be able to recognize exactly what was happening on stage. Stickiness happens everywhere, you just have to WATCH OUT!

The boats 9th post for Idiot Savant

Does anybody that very short little scene where the first woman (his good side) and the Idiot Savant appear on stage in boats? They just walked onto stage in little foot powered fake boats? Well that doesn't make any sense at all, unless it has deeper meaning to it...... DUH, obviously this will have deeper meaning behind it.

This particular scene was pretty easy for me to understand. The whole point of the first woman coming out onto stage in a fake boat was to represent how language must be fluid. You cannot just randomly throw around sentences and words without having some sort of connection between them. Since this whole play was about getting to the Idiot Savant, using language that flowed seems to be a fairly simple concept.

I also found it interesting how they only showed the first woman using a boat and not the second woman. This was an effort to show how she was his good side and how she made the effort to connect with him. It is to make an example of her good will and all of her attempts to get through to him. She tried using language that flowed so that he would be able to understand it. Sadly this effort failed. Once she made this attempt, the Idiot Savant came onto the stage in a similar boat, only this one had some sort of a megaphone in the front of it. The Idiot Savant did this to show how he was not going to focus, he merely was mocking the first woman. Again this is another example of how an autistic child might act. They often will copy what others are doing, just as we saw Wilem Defoe's character do in this scene.

As for the megaphone, I feel that it was to make this point stand out. It was to drive home the idea to us that he was not going to listen easily. This also added to the fact that he was copying and mocking her. It merely made the scene louder and more noticeable to everyone else.

Same voice? 8th post for Idiot Savant

Did anyone notice that during the play, the giant duck and the voice over were the exact same voice? This shows how the duck also represented his sanity and thought. At first he was merely arguing with himself, yelling to nowhere and no one, but at the end the duck comes on stage and the Idiot Savant seems to be a little more clear in everything that he does. It is almost as though the duck is his back up; just as when the play is nearing the end and the Idiot Savant is still being toyed with by the girls, the duck comes on stage to provide him with some help. it always did seem that Wilem Defoe's character was more understandable when the duck was on stage. His actions were swifter and his words were more clear. By having the duck on stage is showed to us all that the Idiot Savant was ready to not be tortured by those women any more. This is all becuse the Idiot Savant throughout the entire play was uncomforable and very irritable. He was never allowed to be left alone because he was always under questioning by the women on stage.

Even though the duck was around in the beginning (we know this because they were exactly the same voice), he was not on stage and therefore not much help to the Idiot Savant. This is why the Idiot Savant got so angry. It is because this giant duck was merely talking to him and not giving him much help. By making his presence at the end the duck was able to provide support for Wilem Defoe's character. Even though the duck did not do anything, that was not his purpose, he was only there to represent the coherence of the Idiot Savant and he did indeed do his job. It almost seemed anticlimactic in the sense that just as the play is about to finish, the duck makes big appearance to help out the Idiot Savant, meanwhile throughout the entire performance, much assistance was also needed.

The yellow jacket 7th post for Idiot Savant

Throughout this play I had to think deeply about almost everything and not just take it for what it appeared to be on stage, but out of all of the actions and language used in this performance there was on object which stood out the most to me. This object was the yellow jacket worn by Wilem Defoe's character for only a short scene. This jacket stood out to me because it was random, just as the little boats that were driven on stage which will be in my next post. This jacket represented more than what it obviously was, it represented Wilem Defoe's quest for composure. He was running around the stage for the entire play never with a moment to just be calm. Just as an autistic child or any young child for that matter has a certain object which they tend to cling to which they find to be comforting, the Idiot Savant has his yellow jacket. As I recall it was only put on after he began to yell at his own thought, "the voice". Once he began to scream one of those men with the funny hats brought a yellow jacket out onto stage. For a moment he began to keep calm when it was on, but after a while he became uncomfortable. Once he became uncomfortable he took it off in a frantic way and moved onto the next piece of the performance. He did this just as an autistic child can often not keep their focus and move on from one subject to another. It is hard for them to sit still and they begin to throw tantrums when they do not get their way. These were all the actions of Wilem Defoe's character while in possession of the jacket. He merely had it on for a short amount of time and then moved on to another subject because he has trouble focusing. At first the jacket was comforting to him and then it became more of a bother to him then anything else.

Along with the representation of his lack of ability to focus, this jacket also had one more meaning behind it. Going with the idea that he did not have jacket on for long brought me to think of how he could not be bounded. He was unable to sit still and to collect his thoughts and he barely gave himself time to focus on what was going on. All of this showing to us how he could not be tamed merely by giving him an object to find comfort in.

P.S. If this helps at all, think of Linus from Charlie Brown and his security blank. He always used it when he got nervous or uncomfortable. The Idiot Savant here uses his jacket when he is angry but since he is autistic he loses his focus so easily and moves on from it. The concepts of a security object are the same here though.

The voice over 6th post for Idiot Savant

All throughout the play we kept hearing this loud, deep and authoritative voice coming over the sound system. This voice was supposed to represent his thought. It spoke to everyone on stage at the same time because he was only arguing with himself. Remember that the other two women on stage were merely representing his conscious in a way. They were toying with him throughout the entire play, each acting in their own specific way (good and evil). The voice had continued to tell the characters that they had been fooled, which after a while began to bother the Idiot Savant. At one point he lashed out and yelled at the voice over (his thought) because he could not focus. This is not actually him arguing with someone as much as it is him arguing with himself and getting mad at himself because he is losing focus. All of this constant change is making him uneasy and his mind cannot focus on what is exactly going on.

As a side note, the other people, the ones with the little hats on, are real. As the Idiot Savant is arguing with himself, the other people bring him the objects that are placed on stage. They are only able to do this because he is arguing out loud with himself. He is yelling his thoughts aloud for the others to hear and the objects are brought on to him on stage. It is almost as though they were his handlers for the performance. They walked him onto stage in the beginning, brought him all of the objects that he needed during the show and at the end directed us out of the theater. The two women and the duck are not real at all, they are the figments of his imagination.