`The Room (1) Introduction Notes

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The scenes of this family look ostensibly real. Normal. But as in an Anton Chekhov play, there is also surrealism about all of this. We never see members of the family together. They interact separately through the Housemaid.

I want to the play to take on an air of timelessness and placelessness. The actors will be of different nationalities, so as to remove any semblance that this is a logical or even a unified set of relationships and events.

In this play, I want to sacrifice reality for art – for drama. I want to challenge notions of time and space. I want to compress distance. I want to bring different planes of reality together on stage.

Abuse in this will be brutal. But we will do so without a single show of violence – no hitting, no kicking – and no bruises, no blood, nothing. We will convey abuse through expression, silence and lighting.

I wrote these notes five years ago, when I crystallized an idea for a play.

I had visited an official locale in Dubai for Overseas Filipino Workers, and it was a huge, two-story villa.  Now picture this: 60+ women crowding its two bedrooms, second floor landing, and first floor space, for their accommodation.  They were runaway housemaids, who were neglected, abused, and otherwise mistreated by their employers.  It was heartbreaking to see them all there.  A year or two later, I heard that those numbers ballooned to over 100 women seeking shelter.

`The Room will tell their story.