Merrick Revisited

Friday, Oct. 5, 2001 | 9:39 a.m.

More than 20 years have passed since the life of John Merrick first became the subject of a play and then a movie.

"The Elephant Man," by Bernard Pomerance, opens the theater season for the Community College of Southern Nevada tonight at the Little Theatre on the college's Cheyenne campus.

Merrick was born in London in 1860 with what is now believed to have been Proteus Syndrome, a disorder of the nervous system that causes nerve cells to grow out of control, creating large, misshapen tumors.

Horribly disfigured, Merrick joined a traveling freak show to survive, and after being abandoned by the show he was admitted to Whitechapel Hospital in London under the care of Dr. Frederick Treves. Merrick was given a permanent home at the hospital, and Treves educated him and introduced him to London society.

Merrick became popular among the elite of society, but realized he would never be accepted as an ordinary person. Eventually he died in his sleep, presumably because he tried to sleep lying down. His enormous head compressed his windpipe and suffocated him.

Robert D. Dunkerly, a CCSN theater professor says the tragedy of the man who lived in the 19th century is relevant today.

"We live in an age where uniformity is greatly prized," Dunkerly said. "We all want to look the same.

"One of the lessons of 'The Elephant Man' is the resiliency of the individual. Ultimately what is believed to have killed him was when he tried to sleep like a normal person, lying down. I think very often uniformity can be a very dangerous thing."

The lesson that teaches tolerance may be relevant today, he said, in light of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, which caused a backlash among some groups against people of Arabic heritage.

Las Vegas was hit hard, economically, when the attacks sent a shock wave through the country. People were not ready to be entertained.

"This may be a bad time to be doing anything (in entertainment)," Dunkerly said. "But I think we will come to terms with what has happned, and one of the things that will help us is the arts. Exposure to painting, dance and theater will help us come to terms with it."

Dunkerly first directed "The Elephant Man" at the University of Nevada-Reno in 1986, and from that experience gained a deep respect for the play and the man.

"There are a lot of good acting parts for beginning actors," Dunkerly said. "The Merrick character intrigues people -- the fact that he was such a downtrodden and abused creature and was able to turn his life into something positive. Here was a hideously deformed man who made himself into a gentleman."

Dunkerly described the play as episodic.

"In a space of 58 pages there are 22 scenes, none of them extremely lengthy," Dunkerly said.

He said a variety of media are used in the production -- slides, recorded sound effects and live cello music.

The role of Merrick is physically demanding. Rather than using makeup to create a realistic image of the deformed character, the actor contorts his body throughout the play.

"(Not using makeup) makes him more human," Nick Connerley, who plays Merrick, said. "The audience is looking beyond the (ugly facial features) and into the soul of the man."

If makeup or a mask had been used, Connerley said, it would have been a distraction from the essence of the play.

"It is much harder to pull off this way," he said. "But the hardest part is the slurring of the words and still making them understood by the audience."

This is not only the 22-year-old freshman's most difficult role, it is his first. The native of Oceanside, Calif., had never acted before enrolling at CCSN.

Connerley, who moved to Las Vegas 18 months ago, said he is shy by nature and took a drama class taught by Dunkerly to overcome the shyness -- a quality John Merrick also had to overcome.