All music © David Wilson 2006-2016 All Rights Reserved
The Waiting Room
The Waiting Room by Lisa Loomer is a black comedy about corporate health care, medical ethics, sexual politics, and the ideal of woman’s beauty thru the ages and across cultures. Three women from different times and cultures meet in a modern doctor’s waiting room. Wanda, a present day bar-hopping New Jersey-ite worried about her Silicone breast implants; Victoria, a 19th century repressed “hysterical” English housewife, secretly reading Freud and hiding it from her husband; and Forgiveness from Heaven, a 18th century Chinese wife who’s toes are falling off from her bound feet. The Waiting Room opening music weaves the 3 themes of the women – Wanda, a bluesy, boozy slide guitar, Victoria, an oppressive progression of piano chords with a strained melody trying to escape, and Forgiveness from Heaven, a lilting slow dance played on an Erhu. The Aural image I took in this play was that the strings of the instruments represented the women who’ve been stretched, hammered, plucked, and otherwise abused by all the men in their lives. Most of the piano pieces composed for Victoria, were played in an extreme high register- even above the natural pitch of piano, as if she is wound tight, and her sound is brittle, having little effect on the world around her.
Brandeis Theater Company
Fall 2006
Directed by Janet Morrison
Scenic Design by Stephanie Nimick
Lighting Design by Karen Perlow
Costume Design by Becky Farmer
Music and Sound Design by David Wilson
Photos by Mike Lovett
Waiting Room Opening
The themes of the three women establish and mingle, which then segues into the waiting room muzak – “Put on a Happy Face”, which played endlessly under each waiting room scene, as if this room is a hell of false cheeriness put up by the medical establishment.
Forgiveness from Heaven’s Theme
Victoria’s Theme
Wanda’s Theme
The Rape of Victoria
Wanda’s Bad News
The Diagnosis is Breast Cancer
Top of Act 2
At the Spa, “New Age” music opens the act and plays under the scene
Gurney Dance
The women enter the recovery room, their attendants wheel them each in on their gurney, in a slow dance of gurneys, their themes mingle slowly, as if under anesthesia.
