I am reminded of the University of South Carolina production of Ionesco’s Rhinoceros a number of years ago. Like Milgram’s experiment, Rhinoceros was created in response to the atrocities in World War II. The set for the production was a streetscape painted on several spandex panels. As the play progressed and more and more people turned into rhinoceroses, the set stretched up and up, distorting the image and increasing the sense of tension. Another play that comes to mind is Sartre’s No Exit, where hell is other people.
I like your idea of the voltage increasing gradually over the fifteen minute performance (rather than quickly rising at the end.) I also like your ideas of sounds. I think that electric lights make the most sense. I can see fluorescent lights creating an underground lab sort of feel. It would be interesting if the rest of the environment were strangely realistic, as though they are trying to recreate the world in a lab. At first I was thinking it could be a restaurant, where the Learner is the waitress and the Teacher is a customer. Each could wear a big label around their neck, “Waitress” and “Customer.” The Researcher would still be a person in a white coat.
However, I remembered that a huge factor in the Milgram experiment was the physical distance between the Teacher and the Learner. The likelihood of the Teacher stopping greatly increased if the Learner were in closer proximity. This seems important. The experiment itself seems to prove the futility of getting people to question authority. Humans are social creatures, that’s part of what makes us function. But perhaps some good would come of getting people to stop and think more carefully about the people they are hurting, as though they were in the room with them. I guess it’s the same thing and still futile. I don’t know. Our need to respect authority trumps our need to respect our own morals unless the result of our actions is right there in front of us. Is this what you meant by pain=discipline?
We could make a scenario that gets repeated over and over with a single factor getting changed gradually (like proximity of the Learner). This would make it very experiment-like. (The Milgram experiment seems to necessitate three people. How do we get around this?)
I tried to imagine setting up some sort of test for the waitress to complete … such as carrying heavier and heavier stacks of dishes. But even if the Teacher were behind a window watching the Learner, I felt like this would be too close. Knowing whether the Learner completed the task or not would require visually watching her. I thought some more about cases in modern life where there is a real distance and disconnect which perhaps leads to dehumanization. Tech support people from other countries seem appropriate. I could see the Teacher and the Learner getting introduced initially, but then all the Teacher sees of the Learner at first is the response on the screen of a computer. Next level: the Teacher talks to the Learner on the phone. Then finally the Learner is sitting next to the Teacher at the same computer? Perhaps this is too literal. I do like the idea of making the piece more about movements and gestures.