War and Psychoanalysis __________________________ A full-length play By Steven Lehrer Contact: Steven Lehrer 30 W. 60th Street New York 10023-7909 phone 212 765 7132 http://stevenlehrer.com
[email protected] ii. CAST OF CHARACTERS PROFESSOR DOCTOR SIGMUND FREUD, age 65, immaculately coiffed and dressed in an expensive three piece suit. When we see Freud he is either holding a cigar or has a cigar in his mouth. DR. HEINRICH ROSEN, a middle-aged doctor, almost completely blind STEFANIE GAISMAN , a beautiful, unstable young woman; the same actress plays FRÄULEIN PETER THE RAT MAN (Ernst Lanzer), an officer and army deserter with severe post traumatic stress disorder. He is a small man who resembles a rat, also plays SEXTON and MASKED FIGURE. THE RAT MAN'S FATHER, a huge, hulking, brutal man, also plays RABBI, BARON GAISMAN, and MILITARY DOCTOR. MAID, an offstage voice with two lines in scene 21. SETTING The entire action of the play takes place in the Vienna consulting room of Professor Doctor Sigmund Freud. The year is 1921. SYNOPSIS A middle aged obstetrician, Heinrich Rosen, blinded in a hate crime and suicidal, comes to Freud to become a psychoanalyst. Freud demands in return that Rosen find out whether one of Freud's patients, the Rat Man, was circumcised. Freud needs this information for a new theory of compulsive neurosis. At the same time, a wealthy schizophrenic young woman, Stefanie Gaisman, raped by her father, Baron Gaisman, and possessed by a dybbuk, is sent to Freud for treatment. Rosen and Stefanie meet by chance. Freud learns of the meeting and forbids Rosen from seeing Stefanie.