‘Victoria’ tackles dementia

ORONO – The Maine Center for the Arts and Community Health and Counseling Services are again co-sponsoring a play that illuminates the depths of geriatric dementia. Last year, the two organizations brought the one-woman show about coping with schizophrenia, “My Sister’s Sister,” to the University of Maine.

“Victoria” will be performed at 3 p.m. Sunday at the MCA. The two-person play offers a glimpse into the imaginative mind of a woman with Alzheimer’s disease. Victoria is an 81-year-old living in a nursing home attended to by a seemingly indifferent orderly.

The elderly Victoria has lost her memory and her cat; she’s lost control over her life and her bladder. She has lost almost everything, according to Canadian actress Dulcinea Langfelder, who portrays her.

“Victoria is but a shadow of herself; she is a character who’s forgotten her role, a puppet who adapts and adopts to dramatic and comic situations as her imagination dictates,” said Langfelder in her artistic statement about the production. “Her wheelchair is also her rocking chair, her prison, her tango partner and her flying chariot.”

Langfelder approached the title role with trepidation when Charles Fariala first suggested it to her. He worked as an orderly in a long-term care facility and introduced the actress to 90-year-old Angele Petrilli. “Victoria” is based, in part, on Petrilli’s experiences with dementia.

“I took a long time and delved into the subject matter gradually, gently, but thoroughly,” explained Langfelder in an interview published in a Canadian theater company’s program. “I nearly dropped the project many times, because a question that seemed unanswerable kept coming back to me: How could I focus on the subject matter yet do what I love to do onstage, which is to dance and make people laugh?”

According to a review published in Montreal’s The Gazette early last year, she accomplished that goal.

‘”Victoria’ is a tragicomic tour de force for Langfelder,” wrote Linde Howe-Beck. “The always remarkable Langfelder, more muscular than most 90-year-olds in disposable diapers, hospital gown and white wig, careens around the stage in, over and on the wheelchair, which serves as prison, rocking chair, tango partner and chariot. …”

“Victoria” is the fifth one-woman show the actress has created since 1985, and it is one of the most personal, Langfelder admitted. While she was researching geriatric dementia, her father had a severe stroke that left him without the power of speech. The actress said in interviews that much of the “gestural part of ‘Victoria’ comes from him.”

Langfelder said that almost everything she read about Alzheimer’s disease was grim and written from the perspective of the caregivers and family of the person with the disease, but never from the patient’s point of view. That made her angry.

“In my anger, I found the key to answer my question,” said the actress. “If ‘Victoria’ the play is seen through the eyes of Victoria the character, and not from the standpoint of her caregivers, I could present the gamut of emotions we feel until the moment we die.

“That has been my mission – to make a heroine out of someone we would normally tend to pity. I saw how I could give her life and underline the fact that we are alive and living right up until the end – and maybe beyond! … If someone wants to use the show as an educational instrument, I’m happy with this. My intention is to help people.”

“Victoria,” which runs a little over an hour, will be performed at 3 p.m. Sunday at the Maine Center for the Arts at the University of Maine in Orono. For ticket information, call 581-1755.