Guernica Continuum
GUERNICA CONTINUUM
A hybrid between moving drama and film that reveals deep-rooted human ignorance, selfishness, and inability to hear others. Tom and Bahia meet in jail. Through agitated, self-centered dialogue they expose sullen pasts. He lost his wife and is looking for her, she killed her child. But why? Bahia moves to a structure without the roof where she meets abusive natures of archetypal characters: mother, Guernica (with cerebral palsy), an amputee, 2 brothers, and a sister (all with issues). By explaining what she did and did not do she starts to break away from the past and recognizes metaphors for victims of a redundant social construct. Tom’s absence pounds her psyche. She must go back, he is waiting to drive away with her. But Why?
CHARACTERS:
Bahia - early 20’s; African American, expressive eyes, agitated stare, timid and introverted sexually benign body. She is a soldier in a uniform.
Tom - early 30’s; Italian American. Appears cold by nature, savvy, and direct. He is strangely distant from everything he says, confused, and can not be alone. He needs a wife.
FILM STORY:
Bahia and Tom meet in undetermined and secluded place: JAIL. Tom arrives disenchanted and a wreck after looking for his wife all day. Bahia has been in a next-door cell secluded and unaware that she might live there for life. She chain-smokes. She mumbles about her son, murder, spina bifida, and being raped. An intermittent “foot-stomping” coming from the floor resembles ongoing ‘spying’ and it makes them literarily mad. Through disassociations' and futile odd dialogue, we learn, that they carry with them burdens of their families sullen past, unable to make a clear cut between past and present. Throughout dialogue from cell to cell, we learn that Tom has 32 children somewhere with 16 ‘wives’, but loves one. Bahia killed in the army and is ‘justified’ to kill her baby and stop his suffering from spina bifida.
They escape
Escape becomes a search for a place of payback and redemption.
TECHNIQUE
Guernica Continuum can be done two ways: either as a film, where half is shoot in a building without a roof, and instant feeling we get is as if this is theatre. Or it can be divided into film (jail) and the stage.