Day Room

I believe humor may very well be more important than philosophy. Remember that Nietzsche admitted science is more successful than philosophy because science has answered more questions. In other words, it has found its mark. Imagine, then, how much greater humor must be as it mocks, dazzles, and romanticizes. The big quarrel, though, is the implication that humor cannot have philosophical implications.

Now, I believe I can point them and you to a philosophically respected novelist who writes funny, philosophical plays. I had always confined Don DeLillo in the ranks of the novelists-only (as I once thought Dove was just a great poet.) When I thought of DeLillo and his work, he always conjured images of some mad giant, somewhere between Huxley, Reed, and Vonnegut. Now that I have read The Day Room, I see that he is an amalgamation of these writers along with Carol Churchill and Albee himself.

The play takes place in a psychiatric ward, which is a great setting for reasons that are discussed by the characters. There is a quiet, polite dignity around airplanes and hospitals. People are assigned numbers and the temperature is regulated. Wyatt notices: “The Hush of death. On airplanes, in hospitals.” For a long time, the audience and the actors have a difficult time deciding who is the patient and who is the doctor, and while it could simply be my reaction, I decided by the end of reading the play that I was the crazy one. I can only imagine what an effect the staging must bring. The actual “day room” is where the seriously insane live. They act out characters based on the clothing they find in closets, and this day room is where the entirety of act two is set.

As for staging the play, I would recommend this play for highly experienced audiences only. Not that the play is incredibly cerebral, but there seems a certain groove to the play that I believe only an experienced audience would catch. At least in America, I’m thinking this play would find its greatest success in college theatres or in larger community theatres. I mean, if you find yourself trying to decide between this and Our Town, Wilder it is.

But back to DeLillo. Check out this exchange from pages 21 through 23 of the play as Dr. Phelps and Nurse Walker explain disease to Wyatt:

P 20-23 Dr. Phelps: But that is what hospitals are for. So a person can follow his disease into the untraviolet light.

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