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The Seventh Chair: An Audience Encounter

1993; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 12; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/lm.2011.0244

1080-6571

David Flood, Rhonda L. Soriceilli,

Cultural Studies and Interdisciplinary Research

J^ The Seventh Chair: An Audience Encounter" David H. Flood and Rhonda L. Soriceili A Note on the Script The script began as a straight academic piece that analyzed the manner in which four relatively well-known plays dramatize doctors' crises in professional identity. As our acquaintance with the characters grew, however, an alternative emerged: could we offer, instead, a way of understanding the characters by becoming them—by viewing them from within, rather than from without? What we intended, then, was a different way of knowing these plays and their characters; the result, we hope, is an exercise in empathy, not just for the actors who play the characters' parts, but for the audience as well. Characters (in Order of Appearance) The Therapist, a group psychotherapist and physician. Michael Emerson, consulting physician at a general hospital in England. Thomas Stockmann, medical director of the Health Institute at Kirsten Springs, in Norway. Martin Dysart, child psychiatrist at Rokeby Psychiatric Hospital, in southern England. Frederick Treves, surgeon and lecturer in anatomy at the London Hospital . Clare Scott, a physician who works under the supervision of Dr. Emerson . * We wish to thank the Society for Health and Human Values and the Institute for Humanities and Medicine at Hiram College for allowing us to read this script before their members. Literature and Medicine 12, no. 1 (Spring 1993) 42-64 © 1993 by The Johns Hopkins University Press Flood and Soricelli 43 About the Characters With the exception of the therapist, the persons portrayed here are dramatized extensions of characters who appear in other plays. Doctors Emerson and Scott are based on the characters of those names in Brian Clark's Whose Life Is It Anyway? (1978); the original for Dr. Dysart appears in Peter Shaffer's Equus (1974); and Dr. Treves owes the outlines of his character to his namesake in Bernard Pomerance's The Elephant Man (1979). Although Dr. Stockmann finds his first incarnation in Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People (1882), he has a closer affinity with the Stockmann in Arthur Miller's adaptation of that play (1951). Act One The Session A group therapy session, for doctors who are experiencing a crisis in professional identity, is about to begin. The room in which it is to be held contains six chairs arranged in a deep semicircle that is open toward the audience. The Therapist, seated at one end of the semicircle, awaits his five clients. Doctors Emerson and Scott have recently lost their patient Ken Harrison, a paralyzed sculptor who sought legal assistance in his quest to have lifesustaining medical treatment discontinued. Although Dr. Scott had empathized with Harrison's position, Dr. Emerson had fought to maintain his patient's life. Dr. Stockmann has lost his job, and his family has suffered stoning and ostracism, because he has revealed that the mineral springs of his town are contaminated. Blackmailed by his father-in-law, who had thus hoped to get him to change his report, publicly scorned and ridiculed by his brother, Peter, the mayor of the town, he has nonetheless refused to compromise what he considers the truth. Dr. Treves had struggled to normalize John Merrick, known as the Elephant Man, a hideously malformed side-show peak, but had failed to recognize Merrick's human needs. Now that his star patient has died, he is reexamining his professional goals and motives. After having treated Alan Strang, a boy who had blinded a stable full of horses, Dr. Dysart is now being consumed by intolerable doubts about his whole profession. Alan's passion for his god, Equus, has only underscored the passionless life of the psychiatrist and made him question the value of the "normal," to which Dysart has thus far dedicated his whole life. The Therapist also awaits a colleague whom he has invited to observe and comment on the present session and its therapeutic process, about which he himself has developed some doubts. This colleague's presence is indicated by a 44 THE SEVENTH CHAIR seventh chair, which the Therapist will bring in and which remains vacant throughout. As the play opens, the Therapist is looking at his notes, then looks up and turns to the...