Skiso

Vahur Keller “SKISO”

Author, director and sound designer: Vahur Keller
Artist: Britt Urbla Keller
Choreographer: Kristina Paškevicius
Lighting designer: 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 “ghoul of Plainfield,” 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. The way the dead control the lives of the living is not only rich material for archetypal drama, but also a deeply human and timelessly relevant subject. In our memories, everyone important to us lives on—we sometimes have conversations with them, and sometimes they give us advice. People who died long ago still influence the fate of entire nations. Sometimes their bodies are not buried, but preserved after death so that people can continue to live and communicate with their ancestors in the same physical space.

Where does a dead person reside in the human consciousness, and how different are they 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 within it. When communicating with the dead, the dialogue probably takes place between different parts of our own consciousness, and new ideas or decisions likely arise in much the same way as they do when we communicate with the living. But that is only broadly speaking, and on the surface.

What happens when another living person enters the consciousness of someone who lives only with the dead and communicates mainly with them—someone who does not always behave as predictably as their companions so far? This turn of events may even upset the dead.

In a way befitting 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 hazy boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead.