Torture and Fear as Tools for Maintaining Power in THE GERMOPHOBE: A Thesis on Creating a One-Man Show From the Author-Actor Himself

• Main Author: Galick, Alexander Stephen
• Other Authors: Judy, George
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: LSU 2011
• Subjects: Theatre
• Online Access: http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-04152011-172158/

The project was to create a 20-45 minute one-man show and stage it. This thesis describes the process of creation and documents the projects multiple permutations from the search for a topic and setting parameters, to research, initial improvisation experiments, to a growing and reorganizing text, to the conversion into verse to the final script, the performance, and planned future development. The resulting show is about a man whose irrational fear of germs has ballooned out into an irrational fear of the outside world, fear of being infected, and affected by foreign things and ideas. This fear drives him to maintain strict control over his imagined world populated by household items whom he interacts with as if they were living, breathing, speaking human beings. He resorts to torture in order to extract information from unruly subjects, but this time he makes a mistake (in torturing a tin can), and tortures the wrong subject to death. This begins a rift, between him and his trusted advisor (a bottle of hand sanitizer called Phil) that threatens to destroy his entire fantasy world. The full title is The Germophobe Or The fantastical journey of Edward G. Braithwaight III As leader of human kinds last hope for victory over The subversive tactics of botulism (and their microscopic allies) to overturn the world order and deny us all the rights of Life, liberty and the pursuit of cheese