Skiso

Vahur Keller “SKISO”

Author, director, sound designer: Vahur Keller
Artist: Britt Urbla Keller
Choreographer: Kristina Paškevicius
Lighting artist: Rene Topolev
Actors: Meelis Kubo, Elina Reinold, Liis Haab

Kellerteater’s new production, “Skiso,” is a psychological thriller inspired by the life of Edward Theodore Gein, the “Plainfield Ghoul,” Robert Bloch’s story “Psycho,” and Alfred Hitchcock’s film of the same name.

The motif of a man living with his dead mother has haunted director and playwright Vahur Keller for several years. Alongside being rich material for archetypal drama, the way the dead control the lives of the living is also a deeply human and timelessly relevant subject. In our memories, all the people who matter to us live on—we sometimes talk with them, and at other times they give us advice. People who died long ago still influence the destinies of entire nations. Sometimes their bodies are not buried but preserved after death, so that people can continue living and communicating with their ancestors in the same physical space.

Where does a dead person reside in human consciousness, and how much do they differ from a living companion? Even when we communicate with living people, we can only receive and understand what our consciousness is ready for—what already exists in some form somewhere in our minds. When communicating with the dead, the dialogue probably takes place between different parts of our own consciousness, and new ideas or decisions likely emerge in much the same way as they do when we communicate with other living people. But that is only broadly speaking, and on the surface.

What happens when another living person appears in the consciousness of someone who lives only with the dead and communicates mainly with them—a person who does not always behave as predictably as the companions he has had until now? Such a turn of events might even upset the dead. In a manner suited to Kellerteater, the planned production explores what may have taken place in the mind of Ed Gein, who ended his life in a psychiatric clinic, and probes the blurred boundaries between the world of the living and the dead.