Crash Test Dummy:
This is a radio drama exploring how a coma can affect somebody’s life, in respect of it as time travel which results in a ‘loss of identity’. My role in this production was as the writer and director as well as co-editor. The main advantage with this production was that we did not have such a strict time limit as we had for “Bad Company”, giving more freedom to our creativity letting us use the time we needed to tell the story we wanted to tell. Production time wise we had the time to have a proper audition improving the quality of the cast quite a bit.

The story is about a teenager that ends up in an accident after joyriding with his fathers car. As a result of this he ends up in a coma, and against all the odds he wakes up 9 years later. His girlfriend has now married and his mother has gone insane, and we follow him readjusting to what seems to him as a very changed world both socially and technologically. Interestingly to him it feels like his only been away for a couple of hours, and the notion that this world has already accepted him as dead.

Character wise Nick (the main character) comes across like a quite confused teenager trying to act as an adult, but not quite passed the stage of puberty rebellion and thereby failing his adult act. He also seem to try to maintain an ignorance of the harder facts of his new life, hence pushing these problems down to a subconscious level probably being the cause for his gradual mental decline. The feelings towards Helen’s (his former girlfriend) marriage and his mothers so sudden insanity (at least in his perception) is rarely addressed, showing how he tries to keep and accepting attitude towards these things. However he tries to change what he can about the new reality he is confronted with, confronting his dad (George) with his excessive smoking as this is reason for concern. George is in a way the only one he got left in his life being the holding point perhaps keeping him sane.

George does also suffer a mental decline due to the ‘loss’ of his wife, and perhaps guilt since he was actually considering letting his son go. However he see him try to stay on top of things, even though he seem to actually deep down bear a grudge against Nick for his stupidity 9 years ago resulting in the collapse of their family’s bond. But he is also his only son so he tries to keep these feelings to himself, only to be come out in the open in his weaker moments.

Helen comes across early in the play as a quite strong and independent as well as loving girl. Still these tragic events has obviously caused and drastic change to her personality, as she seem more emotionally vulnerable now in contrast to her earlier strong self-esteem. This may also perhaps be the reason why she chose to marry in her early 20’s which is less characteristic for an independent women. She probably needed to have someone to hold on to, as her earlier quite serious relationship so suddenly ended in tragedy. This perhaps making her less certain of her possible future, and thereby wanting to assert her future by marrying.