I Decided I’m Fine: A Roach Play

(Second Production)
Devised by The Attic Collective

Written by Rosie Glen-Lambert and Veronica Tjioe

The Attic Collective
Studio/Stage Theater

Los Angeles, California
February 2020

“When does clutter become a problem, and whose problem does it become? I Decided I’m Fine: A Roach Play addresses hoarding, a phenomenon which is often stigmatized but rarely meaningfully discussed. After the sudden death of their infant child, Ellen and Stephen find themselves faced with the difficult task of moving on from the objects that remind them of the incident. For Ellen, this proves to be too overwhelming of a task, leading to years of compulsive accumulation. Juxtaposed with the play’s realism is a second layer of the play which utilizes clowning, comedy, and a cockroach musical to steer the audience through the many different ways hoarding is perceived and portrayed in society.”

In its second production, I Decided I’m Fine: A Roach Play became a deeper, more cohesive play through targeted rewrites of the original script, which had been devised by the entire ensemble. These rewrites focused on specifying the sort of items that Ellen hoarded, deepening the relationship between Stephen and Ellen so that its demise would be more meaningful to the audience, and clarifying the lens through which the show is presented. In approaching the play a second time as a director, my focus was on strengthening the metaphor as well as the spectacle of filling a much larger theatre than the first production. As the play progresses, the space becomes more entangled with Ellen’s hoarded possessions. In this production, this hoarding was executed by the ensemble dressed in the clothes of Ellen at various stages of the twelve years we see pass. In the very first transition where items are brought into the space, the audience sees the actor playing Ellen moving in items alongside an actor wearing an identical outfit. In the next transition, the audience sees Ellen several months later alongside an actor dressed in an outfit identical to the one she is wearing in this new transition, plus the actor from the first transition in the original outfit. This goes on until in the final transition Ellen is surrounded by six versions of her former self all adding to the clutter of her home. There is a moment where she breaks from them, observing the way that her accumulation has become something of which she is no longer in control. The overall effect is one of a woman buried alive both by the physical accumulation of her objects and by the depth of her grief.