Skiso

Vahur Keller “SKISO”

Author, director and 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 image 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, all the people who matter to us live on—we sometimes hold conversations with them, and at times 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 living and communicating with their ancestors in the same physical space.

Where does the dead person reside in a person’s 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 is already present in some form somewhere in our minds. When we communicate 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 when we interact with the living. 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 they are used to? Such a turn of events might upset even the dead.

In a manner fitting for 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 worlds of the living and the dead.