Patience

Maya Miro Johnson
b. 2001, USA
Co-Creator, Composer, Director

Setting:

a coma, a memory, anesthesia, a hospital bed, the grave

Libretto:

composite of primary source medical texts, collages of poems from multiple authors, and original text

Characters:

The Patient (mezzo/treble)

Doctor One (mezzo)

Doctor Two (baritone)

Body/Friend (dancer/performer)

Chorus of Alternate Outcomes

Ensemble:

Oboe

Bass Clarinet

Percussion

Double Bass

Moog Modular Synthesizer

Korg Minilogue Polyphonic Synthesizer

Live Acoustic Feedback Instrument

Fixed Media

Duration:

70’ One Act

Set Design:

projections, live video feed, pre-recorded film/media, and center stage “altar" to Saints (authors of text on illness and pain in the female human body whom The Patient canonizes in her mind for comfort, faith, and companionship in the face of the void)

projections and altar are composites of symbolic disability imagery (sunflowers, zebra stripes, disability pride flag colors) and references to surreal visual aesthetics of Frida Kahlo and Yayoi Kusama (polka dots, painting references like wounded deer, Greek columns, monkey, etc.) as well as set pieces designed after hospital beds, MRI machines, Iron Lungs, surgical tables, etc.

lighting alternately dim and grey and stark and unflattering, like operating room or hospital hallway

Plot:

The Patient exists somewhere between life and death, a victim of fatal medical misdiagnosis. The chorus of alternate outcomes reminds her of points in her odyssey at which choices were made that changed her life and the multiple realities that diverged from them.

She recalls with hazy imprecision the steps in her descent:

Prelude: the sudden inexplicable detachment of the body from the self (betrayal)

1. filling out forms in a waiting room (denial)

2. two doctor appointments, one in which she was deemed too cogent to be sick and another in which she was deemed too upset to be reliable (anger)

3. a hallucination of a communion with a black hole while in a full-body MRI scan (bargaining)

4. a failed surgery with vague implications of malpractice (depression)

5. the self winning the last battle against the body (resignation and suicide attempt)

6. connecting with another sufferer, who may or may not be a real person, through an internet forum and calling her Friend (acceptance)

   Interludes between each scene disrupt the pain of memory with abstract prayers to Patron Saints of the Ill, Lame, and Mad (medieval style veneration of texts by writers on pain such as Edith Södergran, Audre Lorde, Hildegard von Bingen, more to be researched, etc.).

SYNOPSIS

Prayers

Solo Voice, text by Södergran, Kahlo, Kusama, Lorde…