Dramaturg's Note:
" What are we standing here for? This dust will not settle in our time. And when it does some great roaring machine will come and whirl it all sky-high again." -- Samuel Beckett, All That Fall

Mad Forest is an exquisite historical play, miostly becuase its story is so close that we remeber it vividly. The Romanian revolution took place seven years ago in December of 1989. The questions for which the play demands answers have still, by 1997, not been satisfactorily answered. As the characters ask their questions, so we took ask questions, making the play, as Hamlet would say, carry great "pitch and moment."

Caryl Churchill wrote Mad Forest through a workshop proces, actually taking members of the Central School of Drama (London) to Romania so that they might understand the tensions and the culture firsthand. The actors improvised scenes based on what they'd known before, and wht they heard and saw. Creating and playing multiple characters which Churchill wrote down, they served as her partners in creating the play.

Mad ForestI is in three acts, the firsta nd theird of which follow the stories of two families, the upper class Antonescu's and the working class Vladu's, as the weather the revolution. Eleven actors present not only the primary family memebers, but people interacting witht hte families, and other Romanian people the family members do not know. Like the origianl company, all of the actors in our production play more than one role.

The characters in the second act are entirely separate from those in the first and third; these people tell the blow-by-blow story of the revolution as they experiences it; their lines were taken from interviews of actual Romanians on the streets of Bucharest. These are ordinary people-students, painters, construction workers, and soldiers - who fought the revolution themselves.

The play is written in thei episodic style in order that the rvolution and the issues it raises should not be seen form only the perspectives of the families. Nonetheless, only a reciatl of the events of the revolution would, like a new broadcast, leave out much of the personal effects of "before" and "after" that can best be shown in the lives of families we meet in Acts I and III. The events in these families' lives, like the wedding before the revolution, and the wedding after ,from the actual violent events describes in the second act.

These questions- those the play cannot answer- are reaised sporadically and powerfully in the finaly act: questions like, was the revolution spontaneous, as first assumed, or actually a staged coup? Were the numbers of corpeses dramatically exaggerated for the sake of publicity? What kinds of changes are realistic to expect, seeing that the National Salvation Fron which the rebels formed was led by former Communists (some of whom were members of Ceausescu's own government)?

Mad Forest is not a play to end turmoil and solve problems, but an experiment in portraying dreadful and wonderful events which rouse more quandries than they can answer. Rather like a revolution...