Unit 12: Task 2.1 - Research of 'One Flew Over...'

Candidate Declaration - I confirm that the attached portfolio is all my own work and does not include any work completed by anyone other than myself

 Task 2.1 – Review a range of research sources to support the production of your performance projects.

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

In our production of 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest', I will be playing the iconic role of Nurse Ratched. Known for her manipulative ways, I'm excited to challenge myself and take on an evil role as I feel like it's the last type of role to tick off my list during my time at Stockton Riverside. I've compiled all my findings to support my performance and understanding of 'One Flew Over..' and my character of Nurse Ratched. 

Nurse 'Mildred' Ratched aka 'Big Nurse'

Ken Kesey when working as orderly in a psychiatric ward, claims that he took inspiration for his character of Nurse Ratched from the head nurse who worked there at the time. He recalls later seeing her at an aquarium, and not 'remembering her being so small and a whole lot more human'. This entire inspiration sums up Nurse Ratched, in the sense that in the ward she is viewed as mighty, powerful and always looking down on others, but once you leave the wards, you realize she's none of those things and that she's actual just a person like the rest of us. Named as the 5th Greatest Villain of all time by the AFI, Nurse Ratched is known for her manipulative yet maternal ways and a character like her hasn't come along before or after her. She's clever yet cunning and understands that none of the patients desire to cross her, so uses that knowledge to turn them against one another and comes out of the chaos looking like the caring hero that she isn't. Nicknamed the 'Big Nurse' by Chief Bromden, it's important to me that I play her as someone who appears sweet and loving, but after you peel back a thin layer of her personality, she's cruel and vindictive, and I need to give the audience a reason for them to really hate me, for if they don't then I don't believe I've done my job very well. In my opinion, after watching Ratched the Netflix series, and snippets of any on and off broadway productions of 'One Flew Over..', I prefer Louise Fletcher's take on Nurse Ratched the most, and she'll be my main inspiration for when I perform. She even said about Nurse Ratched's 1940s style hairdo is always like that because she remains in the past, and doesn't let herself catch up to life...

Nurse Ratched and 'One Flew Over' through the eyes of Ken Kesey...

We first see the character of Nurse Ratched in Ken Kesey's book 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest' published in 1962. She's a former army nurse, and much like how she appears in our script, she constantly creates conflict between the patients when they are at their most vulnerable. It's until Randle McMurphy comes along and disrupts the power dynamic Nurse Ratched controls every day. Even upon McMurphy's arrival, he's warned by the other patients not to defy her highlighting how fearful they all are of her, and also how they all have this shared feeling to not cross her, which unknowingly ties them all together, and when someone new comes along, there's this protective feeling to let them know immediately how she controls everyone's fate in the hospital. There're times throughout the book where McMurphy tries to make her loose her temper, and surprisingly succeeds, like when a failed vote to keep the television on turns into a rowdy and loud scene between the patients and McMurphy. However, to reinforce some power back into the hospital, she keeps him in the ward instead of being sent elsewhere to send a secret message to the patients that he is just as cowardly as them. It's then here that McMurphy finds out that the majority of the patients he's connected and became close to are actually voluntary, which makes him submit to her authority giving Nurse Ratched back her leadership and allows her to return back to the never-ending cycle of eventful group therapy meetings and having the power to create chaos and terminate it at the same time. I truly believe that while all the patients hate the 'Groundhog Day' type of cycle in the hospital, Nurse Ratched loves it. She knows what to expect every day, and understands what each person thinks of her, and she prefers it if it's a fearful submissive feeling. It allows her to be more manipulative towards the patients and with the use of the Logbook, without asking she gets to unlock the key to their minds and use their private thoughts against them.

After an infamous party, a tragic death, and a physical interaction between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched, all the times he was warned by his fellow patients at the beginning of the story about the power Nurse Ratched has to change your life in a matter of seconds catches up to McMurphy, as he is lobotomized and brought back to the ward as a 'vegetable'. However, Chief Bromden, who became protective of McMurphy, decides to suffocate him with a pillow, so that he's dead with dignity rather than still alive as a symbol of Nurse Ratched and what she can do. Chief Bromden escapes the hospital by smashing a window open and is actually the narrator of 'One Flew Over..', and he's telling the story after he escaped from his point of view from all the times he surveyed the hospital and how each patient changed for good, but mostly for worse. A lot of the patients end up leaving the hospital after McMurphy's death, as they had the cloth removed from their eyes, and were able to see the strings they had attached to them by Nurse Ratched, who ends up losing a lot of power in the ward now that her control has dissipated. Although everyone in the story tries to go back to normal after such harrowing events, a lot of them can't like the patients who choose to remove themselves from the place they speak so negatively about, whereas Nurse Ratched is desperate for life to get back to normal, highlighting once again how power hungry she is, and how she craves the cycle to return back to its original routine. 

Analysis of 'One Flew Over..' by Ken Kesey

Upon researching the deeper meaning behind the book, I found out that while it looks into the psychological effects of institutionalization, it also highlights the conflicts that emerge through the struggle of power between individuals like McMurphy and institutions represented in 'One Flew Over..' by the Oregon State Hospital and its staff members like Nurse Ratched. Throughout the book, the patient's main conflict that emerges upon McMurphy's entrance into their lives is trying to resist Nurse Ratched's emasculating repression, which they had been used to and didn't want to change it out of fear. To the patients, McMurphy is a non-confirming force in comparison to their docile submission to Nurse Ratched and the other aides. I believe they want to stand up to her but value their lives a bit too much to end up in shock therapy or in the lobotomy room, so instead keep in line and stick to what they know, which is that they don't have the amount of power and respect that Nurse Ratched has. However, to further showcase just how much McMurphy's presence in the hospital changes the patient's beliefs, in the book Chief Bromden speaks about a fog he sees due to the medication he is on, and how suddenly he feels himself being pulled out of it. The fog represents the dulled boring state Nurse Ratched keeps all of the patients in, and that the feeling of being pulled is actually McMurphy and that his actions are dragging himself and the others out of the fog, meaning he's really showing them the truth about the ward. The patients have already gained a sense of independence and understand what it feels and looks like, so when Nurse Ratched attempts to drive a wedge them and McMurphy she's already failed before she's started. Due to this, a huge analysis of the book is recognized that while individual rebellion has chaotic consequences, it gives others the power to stand up for themselves and inspire others to do the same. 

Nurse Ratched and McMurphy have a very complicating relationship, and its apparent in all adaptations of 'One Flew Over..' including the script we are taking on for our end of year show. Both characters symbolize two very different things which is the struggle between repression and individualism, and I believe it was Ken Kesey's aim to highlight this during a time in history when civil rights was a huge talking point. It's clear as well how much this struggle is represented in these two characters when McMurphy's attack on Nurse Ratched leads to his fatal lobotomy where he not only loses his free will but his entire personality, and as if nothing happened the hospital returns to its same cycle and the system is back to being in charge. The system can defeat the strongest people and crush their individuality by removing it. Nurse Ratched is a manipulative woman who uses being a part of the system to her advantage, and it's evident to see during moments like group therapy and medication time at the station. In my opinion, she manipulates Billy Bibbit the most by coercing him into divulging the ward and it's patient's secrets by threatening to tell his mother about his attempted suicides. She's clever in an awful way by using a patient's close relationship whether it's a good or bad one and mentioning them to intice secrets that she wouldn't already know. In a way, she's also a coward, in that she resorts to threats instead of getting something done herself and knows the level of power she has so uses it to do nothing herself and lets the mention of shock therapy or a possible lobotomy do the scaring. We see small amounts of her power diminish across the weeks McMurphy rises above her, and the ultimate sign of her weakness is when she is attacked by McMurphy and strangled by him leaving her croaky and unable to use her most potent tool - her voice. Her voice keeps everyone in line and order and other than that and her infamous stare, she has nothing to intimidate them and scare them into doing anything. 

The Biggest Theme of 'One Flew Over..'

The main theme of the book excluding the obvious power difference that exists in the system is that women are viewed as castrators. Other than Candy Starr and Sandra who are seen as good characters, the women are seen as threatening figures. The patient's fear of women is the book's most central features, confirmed by Harding who states that 'We are the victims of a matriarchy here.' His statement comes down to the hospital being ran by women and holding lots of men inside, and the men in question have been damaged before entering the wards by having relationships with uniformly overpowering women. One example of this being true is with Billy Bibbit and his mother, who continuously babies him which delayed his puberty and all the thoughts to do with it in his mind. Nurse Ratched holds Billy's mother against him whenever he is questioning her actions, and we see how fearful of both Nurse Ratched and his mother he is highlighting how damaged he is. Another example is of Chief Bromden, whose mother put him down and made herself bigger than him, not physically but mentally. His own father changed his last name to hers, suggesting both male members of the family were intimated by her and would never question her, much like how the patients are with Nurse Ratched. A final example is of Dale Harding and his wife who would constantly question his infidelity and masculinity. At a time where being queer was looked down on and not well respected, I'm guessing if someone called you gay, it would be insulting so when Dale's wife tells all the patients he's having affairs with men instead of women, everyone laughs and shames him. It's quite sad actually, as Harding lives his life being humiliated for not pleasing his wife - who continously cheats on him while he's in the wards - whilst trying to suppress his homosexual urges, and a lot of that is down to the way his wife reacts to him not being able to fulfill her sexual needs, and in return spreading truths concerning his masculinity and lies in relation to his masculinity. This highlights that Harding feels like he can't be himself around women, seen in the book as he appears as the leader of the group, taking charge to try and be viewed as a form of sterotypical masculine. To summarise, the women in the patient's lives are created to emasculate them, and a real life metaphor of this in the book, is with a patient called Rowler who commits suicide in the ward by cutting of his own testicles, and once news breaks out about it happening, Chief Bromden says 'all the guy had to do was wait' implying that in the end he eventually would have been castrated. Nurse Ratched's control in power comes from making the male patients feel fearful, and during the books publishing women were hugely seen as weak and not capable to do the things a man could do, whereas Ken Kesey has flipped the table and put the women in charge of the men who are seen as weak instead.

Ken Kesey's inspirations

Ken Kesey wrote this book in the late 1950's when he was enrolled in a creative writing program at Stanford University. During this time, he also worked as an orderly in a psychiatric ward, where he observed the way patients acted to each other in comparison to the aides and nurses who were meant to help them. In addition to this, he participated in experimental LSD trials which is a psychedelic drug that has actually proved to provide relief to those with anxiety. All these jobs and volunteering work he put himself through is what would have helped him escape his own brain for a moment and enter the mind of Dale Harding or even Randle McMurphy for example and come up with such intense and complicated characters who serve real purpose in the story. 

Adaptations of 'One Flew Over...'

Since the book was published, there has been multiple adaptations of 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' with numerous Broadway performances and one of the most famous films of all time starring Jack Nicholson as the titular character of McMurphy being adapted from the book. It was first adapted into a Broadway play in 1963 by Dale Wasserman, and the script we are taking on is the actual script from the original Broadway play which I believe is very exciting. It starred Kirk Douglas who played McMurphy, Joan Tetzel as Nurse Ratched and he actually purchased the rights to produce it for the stage since he loved the story so much. It also starred Gene Wilder as Billy Bibbitt and the entire production performed 82 performances overall before finishing it's Broadway run. Afterwards came another off-Broadway production in 1971 where Danny Devito played the character of Martini, which he later reprised in the 1975 film based off the books name. At the time of the production in 1971, Kirk Douglas still had the rights to the script for another decade but couldn't seem to find a studio that would want to turn it into a movie. Due to this, he passed the rights onto his son and well-known actor Micheal Douglas who succeeded in getting the film made and ended up producing it as well. 

As we know now, the 1975 film was a huge hit and continues to be a classic in its own right, being named No.33 on the AFI 100 Movies list, and in 1993 being deemed 'culturally, historically and aesthetically significant' by the United States Library of Congress. It's also the second film to win all 5 major Academy Awards - Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay - which saw Louise Fletcher win for her iconic depiction of Nurse Ratched. Upon researching, I found out that the role of Nurse Ratched was originally to be played by Lily Tomlin before on the producers saw her in the background of production and watched one of her early films where she played a similar evil character. Because of this, Lily Tomlin was dropped but went onto a different film and Louise Fletcher was cast instead. Kirk Douglas really wanted to portray McMurphy but by the time it got picked up by a studio, he was too old to play it and Jack Nicholson was the one that eventually got the role. The film was shot in Oregon State Hospital and the actual director of the hospital played Dr. Spivey in the film, which was interesting to know and learn. During the beginning of production, both Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher went to witness electroconvulsive therapy being performed on a patient to understand the level of pain and threat they would be talking about in scenes. It's important to know too that because of this film, shock therapy was looked down on a lot after the public saw how it made patients feel, and before when it was used for anxiety and people with severe depression, people never once saw it as a really bad form of therapy. Using only $4.4 million dollars as its budget, this film directed by Milos Forman really is celebrated for a reason, and as an actor, it's incredible to see the amount of dedication and time that went into making this movie into the one it is we know and love today. 

The adaptations didn't stop there however, with a Broadway revival of 'One Flew Over..' in 2001, starring Gary Sinise as McMurphy which went onto win a Best Play Revival Tony. The most recent take on 'One Flew Over..' lies with the Netflix series 'Ratched' starring Sarah Paulson which follows Nurse Ratched before she became the true villain we know in 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest'. 

Gary Sinise as McMurphy in 2001 - https://youtu.be/icnSKMspAU8

Sarah Paulson as Nurse Ratched in 'Ratched' - https://youtu.be/ZU9ZtlkSnnE

Further research...

My family and I watched the movie to get a bigger insight into the script, and as a first timer watching it, I picked up on lots of things like the similarities and differences between the film and our script of the play. For example, Nurse Ratched is not in the film a lot but in the production we are doing, she's in it more, whether that's observing the patients or having talking scenes. 

Me and my mum found this interesting video on Nurse Ratched that allowed me to learn more about her and unlock a new outlook on how to portray her.

Video On Nurse Ratched: https://youtu.be/SSB_IX560S4?si=GH2WMr0ZuBLQqlV_