TE Bloom Bloom Pow Dramaturgical reference Guide Dalyla McGee | HeyTheresDalyla@gmail.com | 770.597.6178
The Great Lakes
The Flow
The Great Lakes and related water bodies and watersheds are a complex and interconnected system. Water flows from Lake Superior, the deepest and highest in elevation...
... to Lake Huron via the St. Marys River...
... Lake Huron and Lake Michigan are connected via the Straits of Mackinac, allowing the two lakes to act as one hydrologic system...
... From Lake Huron, water moves through the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair, and the Detroit River to Lake Erie....
... Water from Lake Erie then takes a large plunge over Niagara Falls and flows into Lake Ontario. Eventually, the water flows to the Atlantic Ocean via the St. Lawrence River.
World of Play
"Toledo, Ohio on the edge of Lake Erie"
The playwright, Genevieve, is from a small town in Ohio that is on Lake Erie. It is helpful to understand a few contextual elements of rural life in Ohio
The sounds, the crickets, stunning flat open sky, country music, run into ghost... - Genevieve (playwright)
Check out that soundscape!!!
SMALL TOWN OHIO
"THE art museum" p.11
"Its a pretty desolate place, G just feels different. Not doing what most folx are doing (house, kids, hubby). There are like 4 things to do, not public transport, one bar, one coffee shop, one is overly known and perceived..." - Genevieve (playwright)
Farmers vs City Folk
The Blooms are very controversial with who is causing them - the factory farmers and farming polluters are blamed by the city folk, rural folks and small farmers are blaming city polluters
Here is the Ohio Farmers talk about the impact...
BONUS: LISTen to those accents!
Queer in Small Town Ohio
"What is it like for a non-binary character to just be?" - Genevieve (playwright)
ALICE : Something about it is different here. I’ve lived a lot of different places, and I have never felt so — Usually when I move to a new city I don’t feel so noticed — but something here — the way they stare — why does everyone here look at you like —? And I’m not even going to be here that long, so why should I change to fit their way of — p. 81
"When at home and you go on tinder and interested in a queer person, with men its farmers and fishers and such, with women its the same 4-7 people" - Genevieve, playwright
The Blooms
In Ohio, where the play is set, we get water from Lake Erie. With the Algae bloom, we didnt have water for some days. Lots of warnings to not touch water, go near it, and if you boil it, it would get worse” - Genevieve (playwright)
A DEAD HORSE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE EAST RIVER, CIRCA 1832
Title: A Rider and a Dead Horse in a Landscape
Artist: Gustave Doré (French, Strasbourg 1832–1883 Paris)
East River
The East River is a tidal strait in New York City. It connects Upper New York Bay on its south end to Long Island Sound on its north end. It separates Long Island, including the boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn, from the island of Manhattan and the Bronx. Several bridges and tunnels cross the East River. The Brooklyn Bridge is the oldest and most famous
Erie: They're talking about giving me personhood you know? - THE GREAT LAKES OF NORTH AMERICA (p.42)
Lake Erie Bill of Rights
"New law will allow people of Toledo to act as legal guardians for Lake Erie, and polluters could be sued to pay for cleanup costs..."
Though it happened rarely, small farmers were afraid they can get sued randomly holding responsibility as if one of the big farmers.
"... just 12 hours after the final votes had been counted, the first lawsuit was filed in the US district court in Toledo by the owners of a farm that grows corn, soybeans, wheat and alfalfa 40 miles south-east of Toledo. The lawsuit contends that the Lake Erie Bill of Rights measure is unconstitutional and unlawful and will put the fifth-generation family farm at risk."
Creature from Black Lagoon
Creature from the Black Lagoon is a 1954 monster horror film directed by Jack Arnold, and starring Richard Carlson, Julia Adams, Richard Denning, Antonio Moreno, and Whit Bissell. Creature from the Black Lagoon was filmed and originally released in 3-D requiring polarized 3-D glasses, and subsequently reissued in the 1970s in the inferior anaglyph format (this version was released on home video by MCA Videocassette, Inc. in 1980). It was one of the first Universal films filmed in 3-D. It is considered a classic of the 1950s, and generated two sequels, Revenge of the Creature and The Creature Walks Among Us.
Gill - man
The Gill-man is fully amphibious, capable of breathing both in and out of the water. As shown in the first film, it is vulnerable to rotenone. It also possesses superhuman strength, which is flamboyantly displayed in the second and third films. It also possesses large, webbed hands with sharp claws on the tip of each finger. The Gill-man's scaly skin is extremely tough, which combined with a fast acting healing factor, allows it to survive wounds which would be fatal to humans, such as gunshots and full immolation. As shown in the third film, the creature has a dormant set of lungs, should its gills be irreparably damaged. The Gill-man is slightly photophobic, due to its murky water habitat.[5] 35% of the Gill-man's blood is composed of white corpuscles lacking a nucleus.[5]
Post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd)
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental health condition that's triggered by a terrifying event — either experiencing it or witnessing it. Symptoms may include flashbacks, nightmares and severe anxiety, as well as uncontrollable thoughts about the event.
Reminder: PTSD can affect non-military related trauma. Really it can be the result of any big T, Trauma.
Time works different "Trauma Loops":
"Simply put, when a person experiences something traumatic, adrenalin and other neurochemicals rush to the brain and print a picture there. The traumatic memory loops in the emotional side of the brain, disconnecting from the part of the brain that conducts reasoning and cognitive processing." - https://phoenix-society.org/resources/entry/calming-trauma-how-understanding-the-brain-can-help
"...For some, this recovery process is interrupted, leaving them “stuck in time” reliving old memories and fears months and sometimes years after the event."
Fish Mother
Perhaps an allusion to the evolutionary theories that track human orgins to the sea creature Tiktaalik.
THE CREATURE : I dream of the fish. I dream of the fish mother. The fish mother who made us all, Who watches with her wobbling watery blue eyes Spilling over sadness In her saltwater tears.