Category: Valley of Astonishment (Page 2 of 2)

“The Valley of Astonishment” provides the audience with a perplexing look into the cognition of the human mind. The audience is presented with several scenarios of individuals who are given the gift (and curse) of seeing aspects of the world much differently compared to normal human beings. Not only are we provided with their abilities through the observations of a doctor, but we are also given a glimpse into their daily interactions pertaining to their condition.

The first story line we are introduced to involves a young woman who has worked at a newspaper company for around two years, and yet she remains anonymous and ordinary to her superiors. The irony, in this, being that she is quite unordinary with her impeccable memory. An altercation with her boss leads him to realize that she is indeed special, and the fact that it took him so long to realize might be specifically used to portray how some ordinary things, upon closer inspection, can be quite astonishing. Her life is then transformed, as she is made to use her talents to entertain and excite audiences. At some point in her life, she finds herself suffocated by her memory. We end up following Sammy through most of the story, but it is not linear because we are introduced to other characters. Perhaps this is in an attempt to illuminate the range at which this condition can be presented. The condition itself makes a person’s senses blurred to the point where they see something different.

Story

• “The Valley of Astonishment” is a wonderful play, displaying the amazing feats of the human mind.

• The play started off describing a Persian man who had returned to his home having lost everything, including an eye and went on talking about how a phoenix dies in a heap of flames and rises again from it’s ashes

• One of the main characters of the play, Sammy Costas, can recall from memory infinite amounts of information, numbers and objects by using mnemonics. It eventually becomes too much for her to handle and she must find a way to forget all the useless information.

• Another subplot focuses on a man who also has synesthesia. Every note of music he hears is accompanied by a color. As he listens to Jazz music, he splashes colors of paint across a large canvas. He has always been intimidated to bring up this condition to other people for fear of being thought of as weird. However, when he learns that there are others like him, he begins to embrace it.

• Moreover, another subplot focuses on a man who had been paralyzed from the neck down, unable to move anything except his head. As time went on, he learned that he could control his body movements by focusing on them with his eyes. Slowly, he learned to stand and then walk and once again live a normal life.

• The last subplot focused on a one-handed card trick artist.

• The play was humorous, thought-provoking, and simply remarkable. It transported us into the minds of people with extraordinary conditions of the brain and, through their narratives, allowed us to feel what they felt and see what they saw with the images they put into our minds.

The Acting in The Valley of Astonishment strayed far from that of a traditional theatre production. The cast of only three actors played about ten different characters. Each actor performed individually as a victim of synesthesia, and reacted to it in his or her own way. Coping with synesthesia elicited feelings from anxiety, to loneliness, to depression, which shows the realistic variation in reactions people have dealing with a similar situation. The actors also included audience members in the performance, and had to improvise in conversations with the audience. The show ended very abruptly, and I, along with most people had no idea that the show was over until the actors came out to bow. The acting was extremely unique and captivating with several character soliloquies and poetic writing.

Overall, the play utilizes minimal use of choreography. There are not many actions performed other than walking, sitting, and simple gestures. Movement is only used when necessary, such as to portray the task their characters are doing or convey more emotion. This minimal movement focuses the audience’s attention on the words spoken. There are two scenes, however, in which the choreography is very distinct compared to the other portions of the play: the painting scene and the burning of the paper scraps of Sammy Costas’ numbers scene. In the painting scene, a man with synesthesia demonstrates his exuberant and peculiar way of painting. The man is very emotional and passionate in the act of painting in this scene, as portrayed by the actor. The actor uses broad hand movements to demonstrate painting. He even gets on his hands and knees and moves all over the stage. He uses a brush prop and waves it everywhere. The scene gives off an almost whimsical feel with the large movements along with the changing colors of the stage floor. The scene gives deep insight into the mind of the synesthetic. In the burning of the paper scraps of Sammy Costas’ numbers scene, Sammy Costas is very emotional because her memory is inundated and breaking with the overwhelming quantities she has memorized. She is desperately trying to relieve the pain of her numerous memories by writing down the memorizations she made during her shows and burning the papers, hoping that this would erase those memorizations from her mind. Another actor dramatically burns the papers for her by getting on his hands and knees, taking out a lighter, and stretching slowly with the lit lighter from the ground and raising it above is head. The slow dramatic movements in this awkward stance make the scene very powerful. These movements convey the desperation of the characters and entrance the audience.

The acting in the play “The Valley of Astonishment” was extremely original and attention grabbing. Only three actors played all of the roles in the play. The same actor played multiple roles like the man who played Sammy’s employer also played her doctor and show organizer. The actors effectively displayed emotion through their facial expressions along with changes in their voice’s tone and loudness during the play. For example, when Sammy was told by the doctors that she had a gift, her face looked very surprised and her voice loudened. In addition, Body language and movement played a huge role in how the actors played their parts. For example, when Sammy got excited, she stood up and moved her arms around a lot. In addition, when Sammy could not forget the numbers from all the shows she performed she moved her hands as if she was writing the numbers down even though there was no paper there and she didn’t have a writing tool. Finally, the man who overcame his paralysis used movement effectively when he was demonstrating how he made himself able to walk by moving his legs as if they were really paralyzed. Also, the actors would walk to the back of the stage when switching characters, which allowed the actors to really portray a role switch. Silence and standing still was also a very powerful tool the actors used, especially at the end of the play when Sammy was asking the doctors if they wanted her brain and the doctors remained still and silent, emphasizing the horror of mental exploitation.

Valley of Astonishment is mainly the story of a woman, Sammi, coming to understand that she is different after being diagnosed with Synesthesia, a disorder in which she mixes senses. The doctors tell her she is a phenomenon, and she goes from a girl with a great memory working as journalist to an act in a show reciting long lists of memorized numbers and words. As the play develops the audience finds out Sammi’s “trick” behind her memory- she places the words on imaginary “streets” leading from her childhood home. Though her memory started as a seemingly never ending, supernatural entity we find that as Sammi does more shows she first runs out of street space. The doctors then tell her to try something different such as reciting numbers that she writes on an imaginary blackboard. Despite this idea, the space there begins to run out, and she begins to struggle with forgetting. She agonizes over her overwhelmed memory and battles the lists- writing them down and then burning them to erase them from her memory. Sammi learns that you are only capable of forgetting what you want to forget. Sammi lastly steps away from the memory shows that overwhelmed her brain and decides to give her brain to science. The play ends with the doctors’ lingering silence to her offer.

Throughout the play there are references to the phoenix who accepts his death perhaps symbolizing how one should accept themselves- event he bizarre or the flaws. Similarly, there are many references to controlling the body. For example their side plots characters like the paraplegic controls his movements with sight, or the painter executes his Synesthesia in his work all while Sammi controls her memory. The play also follows the fear of being rejected. This is depicted when Sammi goes to the doctor and keeps repeating how she is normal or how the painter is afraid to reveal his Synesthesia because of his prior rejection from his friend. Lastly, the idea that the brain can’t be understood is introduced. For example, how the less emotional doctor questions if the brain can ever be understood fully as more than just neurons, and then in the end the doctors don’t accept her brain when she offers it to science which may signify they feel they have abused her and that they don’t believe it can ever be understood.

• The music makes everything the actors say sound more significant. Also creates atmosphere: for example, music reminiscent of something ancient/mystical when one of the actors talks about the phoenix.
• Interesting to observe the musicians. They  do their work and watch the show when they’re not playing.
• Use of untraditional/non-Western instruments
• The actors’ accents are a kind of music of their own. Gives everything they say an air of importance and causes the audience to listen better to what they say because the accent makes listening to them more interesting.
• Drumming on the wooden pan/drum represents crazy rushed staccato words – creative! (in reference to the Wall Street journal being read by Sammy’s editor, what she says “he’d read so badly”)
• Also use hollow tapping on the wooden pan/drum instrument for rushing, hurried sounds – creative use of music, representing actions
• In a similar vein – I like how the string instrument was used to play short, sharp notes to represent short words or actions
• Turns out the musicians don’t just watch; they participate in the acting too
• Genius – using the string instrument to provide electronic beeping/sound effects for the monitors measuring the brain waves and the printout
• When the pianist was acting as a synesthete in the lab and was instructed to play a piece of Bach he liked – suddenly  the air was stolen from the room. I was removed from the play while he gave us a moving little private concert; it was a little bit devastating when it was over.
• Sometimes the music adds gravity or importance to the actors’ words or illustrates the words, kind of like the concept of form follows function. For example, when one of the actors said, “Broad, very broad,” the string musician played a long, wide sound on his instrument that corresponded extremely well with the words.
• The music is illustrative of the story, so the music style changes with different characters. When we hear the story of the man who paints to music, the accompanying music becomes jazzy and notably different than the background music for Sammy’s character.
• Another very clever idea – the painter character turns a dial in midair, and suddenly the volume of the music turns up, and when he turns the imaginary dial to off, the musicians stop playing very abruptly. There is a sudden stark silence.
• The music style is adapted appropriately for each character, so it lends a lot of color to the performers. For example, the music for the card trick magic show fleshed out magician’s persona by establishing a certain mood.
• The music is kind of scenery – each scene has its signature theme so that you are reminded where you are as the scenes change.

When I first sat down into my balcony seat, I took note of all of the instruments present on stage. They were: a sitar, a gourd percussion instrument, a keyboard, a drum, a gong, a cymbal, and an accordion. The music in The Valley of Astonishment had three purposes: to illustrate how synesthetes perceive synesthesia, appropriate background theme music, and sound effects.
Even though the philosophical backbone of the play only burrowed itself an inch deep into my brain (we don’t have the pleasure of re-reading and absorbing meanings during a live play, unfortunately), the deep sentiments and meanings of it resonated through the music. Middle Eastern (or Persian, in this case) music hummed through the sitar whilst the actors recited excerpts at different times throughout the play from The Conference of the Birds, the Persian poem which one can assume the inspiration for the play came from. I may be a crazy English major, but I really saw the stage shiver with heat waves like it would in the hot climate of Persia (Iran). Another touching musical theme was the one presumably for Sammy Costas- though it may have been a theme for all of the general synesthetes. In my memory it sounds like the delicate piano introduction to the theme from the movie To Kill a Mockingbird. In my logical memory, though, it might have been a Bach piano piece. Something quietly intellectual, like a lullaby. The flute solo at the ended set an eerie finish to the play. I’m still trying to process the meaning of it, so I really can’t comment on its interpretation.
The music also picked up when the few synesthetes were giving their stories away to the cognitive psychologists. It became bubbly and random, but harmoniously so. The musicians were actively trying to produce colors for the audience with “normal” senses. During these tales, the music changed to fit the mood and setting of them- old jazz playing when the man painted, carny show music during the magic tricks. The two instrumentalists pulled off an authentic sound for each section.
Oh, the sound effects. They came out during the humorous parts of the play. The sitar bowed out EEG results, the gourd popped out the passage of time, the cymbal and drum overrode the extensive recitations of Sammy. Very silly- a good comic relief in between the very vague wise sections.
For me, the music explained the subtext I was unable to ascertain from the spoken text. It gave me the emotions and moods I think Peter Brook wanted me to feel: mystical, nostalgic, spooked, and entranced.

Before the actors even started to speak they looked all around the theater making eye contact with as many audience members as possible. There were three actors. At first, what struck me were the different accents that each actor had: French, English, and South African. They all have different voice tones. The main actor who played ‘Sammy’ always had intense expressions whenever she spoke as if the words were coming from somewhere deep inside her.

There were a spare amount of props, so the actors had to mime many props-they acted with nothing. Since there were only three actors, they played different roles, and they sort of tricked the audience members. I believed they were one character, and then the actor switches to a different character and I believed he was that character too.

I also liked how the piano player came up as an actor. Then, for the rest of the show I felt more of a connection with the music, because I felt like I knew the piano player a little bit more.

The actors used a lot of gesticulations, and they were very useful for visualizing what they were saying. Throughout the play the actors spoke to the audience and then went back to the story. This gave the audience insight into the story, and a more intimate connection with the characters.

At one point in the play, an actor mimes painting a picture, and although it was acted well, I would have loved to see the painting. Now that I think about it, I guess this allows the audience to imagine the painting for themselves, because with imagination there are no limits.

In a few parts in the show the actors went into the audience, and called up people from the audience. They acted so seamlessly that, for that moment I forgot I was at a play.