Site Specific: Day 9


Today we discussed ideas we previously thought up as a group and began to think up a storyline of how a physciatrist is shown around the asylum by the abusive doctor.



We printed out some photos of the fort and began devising a scene in two separate groups. Our group went for the picture of the church area in order to create piece for the man who thinks he is the second coming of Jesus. In this scene, he and three of us are praying to the Lords Prayer, begging for sanity. We really wanted to show our desperation in our praying and the insanity of the person who was playing Jesus' second coming. The nurse showed the physciatrist around before the fake Jesus gets angry for him interrupting, showing his unstable mentality.



We then discussed the possibility of the electric chair and how we could incorporate the electric chair in our piece. I thought it would suit my character well, as he is silent, so they may have used it to try and trigger him into speech.


Execution by electrocution, usually performed using an electric chair, is an execution method originating in the United States in which the condemned person is strapped to a specially built wooden chair and electrocuted through electrodes placed on the head and leg.


I searched for what the electric chair may feel like for someone to experience and came across this...


The current surges and is then turned off, at which time the body is seen to relax. The doctors wait a few seconds for the body to cool down and then check to see if the inmate's heart is still beating. If it is, another jolt is applied. This process continues until the prisoner is dead. The prisoner's hands often grip the chair and there may be violent movement of the limbs which can result in dislocation or fractures. The tissues swell. Defecation occurs. Steam or smoke rises and there is a smell of burning. (Hillman, 1992 and Weisberg, 1991) U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan once offered the following description of an execution by electric chair:
...the prisoner's eyeballs sometimes pop out and rest on [his] cheeks. The prisoner often defecates, urinates, and vomits blood and drool. The body turns bright red as its temperature rises, and the prisoner's flesh swells and his skin stretches to the point of breaking. Sometimes the prisoner catches fire....Witnesses hear a loud and sustained sound like bacon frying, and the sickly sweet smell of burning flesh permeates the chamber. (Ecenbarger, 1994)




I know that the use of this chair was to kill, but we can incorporate this into our piece as it was used to help try to cure mental illness by essentially passing a current through the brain to jump start it. Therefore, we can use the same principle of the electric chair, and also have some factual information in the piece to explain to the audience why the electric chair is being used.