Background research to The Wonderful World of Dissocia

The Wonderful World of Dissocia is a contemporary play, written by Antony Neilson in 2004. The play follows a young woman's story through her suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder whcih sees her creating a whole new world in her head in which she entures in to and explores. Lisa Jones meets many strange characters suring her visit to the land of Dissocia, who end up paralelling people in her realy life which is represented in act 2, which sees her waking up in a hospital room.

The main themes running through the play are mental illness, the effects on the victims and how this relates to naturalistic life. Some of the topics explored within the play, such as abuse and sexual assult are very sensitive however, the play is written brilliantly as the author has coorporated these challenging ideas in to discrete and considerate language for the actors to work with.

The ideas behind Dissocia, the play were developed by performing arts students in 2002 and later turned in to the script as we know it today in 2004, by Neilson. This, was 11 years ago; a large amount of our ideologies and societies beliefs have changed since 2004. For example, the play was written in the same where technology wasn't fully developed and understood. The internet was immerging on to the scene with Facebook being founded in this year therefore, this was a new idea to the world. Technology and the internet is such a big part of our life now a days however 10 years ago, this was a different story.

I believe if this script was written in the present day, technology would have a bigger influence and impact on the content of the script and how Lisa deals wth her illness. I think this because, in the present day, typically the internet and social media sites play a big part of a young person's life, therefore I believe technology and the internet would be more invloved in this script. For example, in the play as it stands, where Lisa speaks to herself about her feelings towards her life and the missing hour, if the play was written in the present day I believe she may turn to social media or her phone to message a friend her thoughts and feelings. This shows how much of a difference a decade can make to the actions of a human.