knock on the door

a play about dementia and regret

https://storage.denizaydemir.com/knock-on-the-door-deniz-aydemir.pdf
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This play was written for ken urban’s playwriting class. The writing started with a memory I have with my grandmother who had dementia before she passed. That memory is reflected in the final scene, where Patti asks Chelsea not to be left alone because she loses track of time. Starting from that memory, I wanted to explore the idea of what it must be like to experience semi-aware dementia. The other inspirations for this play are the conversations I’ve had with friends about having a child via IVF.

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Future Improvements

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Averie / Patti dynamic. In this current version, I wanted to make Averie and Patti’s present relationship not very warm. I’m not sure if that tone is struck as well as I’d like or if it should be a more explicitly antagonistic relationship, which would open up a clearer role for Chelsea.

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Chelsea’s role. I think there’s something important about how Patti was a more protective, better caretaker of Chelsea than she was of Averie. And when she only is able to get out the full apology to Chelsea and not to Averie this drives home the injustice that Averie experienced. For that reason, I kept Chelsea in the play. But I think this idea, and Chelsea’s role in other places, might still need to be developed more.

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Pacing and detail of difficult scenes. The scenes where Averie expresses her anger and the flashback scene that hints at what the trauma was like all feel like unrealistic pacing to me on certain readings. I haven’t really nailed down the rhythm for how to write emotional dialogue, especially when the characters need to escalate into that emotion. I also still believe a version of this play could show the trauma more directly, but for this draft I focused more on Patti’s present struggle to communicate her guilt.

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