Patient No.1 – Five Questions for Donald Freed (Metro)

Five questions for…Donald Freed

 

York Theatre Royal is staging the world premiere of Patient No.1, written by acclaimed American political playwright Donald Freed. Set in 2009, it places George W Bush in a psychiatric unit and questions his and the audience’s role in the war on terror.

 

Did you try to get Patient No.1 produced in America?

 

I knew straight away it would be too politically sensitive. It’s in the vein of other work I’ve written that had to come to England before it could be staged in the States.Does portraying Bush as a psychiatric patient make audiences feel sympathy for him? When I wrote [1984 film] Secret Honour, someone was angry with me because he thought I’d made him feel sympathy for Richard Nixon. What that man felt was pity, not sympathy. I want people to see that Nixon and Bush are only human, and that what their opponents hate are the ideas and power for which these men are the servomechanism.

 

Do you think Bush is used as a scapegoat?

 

Once you accept him as human, your political stance is no longer based on your loathing of a figurehead. People are happy to laugh at leaders, but they’re not prepared to do anything about them. It’s as though cracking a joke negates real political responsibility.

 

Will the impending election make any difference?

 

I think both Clinton and Obama will be important, if small, cogs in the wheels of change. Unfortunately,

the geopolitics that rule the world are grounded in such horrific fantasies that there can be no quick and easy solution.

 

Can theatre bring about change?

 

If a play is seriously done, you can open up a space where people can think about it. Antonin Artaud put it perfectly: ‘We are not free. And the sky can still fall on our heads. And the theatre has been created to teach us that first of all.’