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Three performances of two grim plays conjured up by the AUB Drama Club were presented in Bathish Auditorium as of March 16. The first play, given the enigmatic title, 1/7, was an elaborate skit meant to unravel director Israa Dandache’s reflections on the absurd and dark quality of human life in these unstable contemporary times. Dandache capitalized on animate physical expressions and wild gestures to reflect on the chaotic state of a modern world in which the moral stature of human beings has been drastically lowered, reaching a point where young dissolute men throw old invalid women on the ground and batter them to a pulp. The skit also made heavy use of symbolism. For instance, two people writhing on the floor of the stage, which was overwhelmingly flooded with red light, tediously competed for a small but shiny apple hung midway on the stage. The second play, Schism, was scheduled to begin five minutes after 1/7, but didn’t. After the audience had waited twenty minutes, the play directors came forward with an explanation, blaming the delay on “sudden technical problems.” Dealing with the incidence and development of schizophrenia, Schism started with two doctors entering the stage and conversing about their patient's condition. Their tone, odd and suspicious, reflected distrust of the patient, while the patient herself was furtively listening behind the curtain. At the end of the play, when the sick girl is no longer there, the doctors’ accents became normal. The music interludes used in the play served to raise doubt as to whether or not the characters on stage were real or only existed inside the unstable mind of the psychotic girl, tortured by the conflicting voices racking her brain. The voices, played by different characters, pertained to different parts of the patient's psyche. They constantly filled her with conflicting notions about herself, resulting in her seemingly ‘schizophrenic’ attitude toward the people around her. For Sarah Ouwayda, the vice president of the AUB Drama Club and the director of Schism, there were two main reasons behind the choice of schizophrenia as a pertinent topic for the theater. The play was intended to rectify people’s flawed understanding of the disease, often confused with the cognitive split-personality disorder. It was also an attempt to shed light on the individual suffering of schizophrenic patients, who tend to be socially ostracized and generally perceived as laughable dimwits. Ouwayda spoke with reticence about the infamous “technical problems” the production team had to fix at the last minute. “What many people did not know,” she said, “was that we were given very little time to check our light and sound systems, because the auditorium, as usual, had been bustling with other activities all day long.”
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