Wonderful world of Dissocia- background information and first impressions of script

Wonderful world of Dissocia is a contemporary piece if theatre, written and directed by Anthony Neilson. The play is based on 30 something Lisa who suffers from dissociative identity disorder, thought to be an effect of severe trauma during early childhood, usually extreme, repetitive physical, sexual, or emotional abuse. The illness sees it's targets switching between indentities with out then being aware of this. One minute they are themselves and the next, they believe they have a completely serperate identity however are unaware this is happening. 

The play sees Lisa loosing an hour of her life, and follows her quest to re gain this hour as she takes a trip to the world of Dissocia. There, she meets a broad range if character, some good some bad. 

The second act sees her waking up in a mental institution. Was this all a dream or was it real?

Impressions of the script. 

My first observation was the amount of characters that are featured in the play. Below is the character list ; 

There is a total of 27 characters in the okay, which means we will definitely have to double cast. This suggests to me before I read the script that there would be an in depth story line to the play as there are many character, resulting in many perspectives and situations.

Something that really struck me about the script after eading through was how much of a challenge this play is going to be for our class. Not only that, alongside how much of a challenge any of the characters is going to be to play. If I played Lisa, I would have to really do some indepth research into mental illness to understand her character and how she would feel and react to certain situations. From my first impressions fo the script, I think Lisa looks like a real challenge which I am enthusicstic to play. I believe having her character would be a big learning curve for me personally as an actor as i think there is a lot of hidden meaning behind her lines and why she has imagined each character as a part of her world, Dissocia. If I was given the part of an insecurity guard, i would have to invest some time into developingthe comical side of my acting skills. This role in particular requires fast response time to other character's lines and also a large amount of wit to complete the role.

From my first read through of the script, one of the main elements I have noticed is the amount of swearing and explicit content in which the play faces and includes. The content at points is very senstiive and looking at some of the swearing, I feel that I may feel uncomfortable with some of the scenes howevevr this is a challenge I am willing to face as I can learning from this about how to deal with acting surrouding difficult content.

All in all, I am very much looking forward to working with the script as I believe it has the potential to be a humourous piece of contemporary theatre to be enjoyed by mature audiences.