THE STAGE 32 LOGLINES

Post your loglines. Get and give feedback.

FREUDIAN NIGHTMARE

FREUDIAN NIGHTMARE
By Susan Lee Hahn

GENRE: Drama, Sci-fi
LOGLINE:

The spirit of Sigmund Freud is on a quest to reincarnate and falls in love with the woman who he has chosen as his future mother. Together, they devise a plan to get her difficult, world-renowned psychiatrist husband to impregnate her, and at the same time, they discover an experience and a profound connection from their past lives together.

SYNOPSIS:

Overview: This discourse on psychology and the role of the soul brings a certain tenderness to Freud’s teachings. Even the great Sigmund Freud is driven by the unfinished business in his soul and not just by his libido, which runs contrary to many of his theories. The soul of this romantic comedy is the notion that when love imprints on the soul, it can drive us and transform us for lifetimes to come.

Synopsis: RENAIA BATEMAN (40) wants to have a baby. Her world-famous psychiatrist husband, NORMAN BATEMAN (55) has secretly promised his spoiled daughter from his first marriage, KIMMY BATEMAN (21) that he would get a vasectomy as a birthday present to her so she would never have to share his affections or his finances with another half-sibling. She’s jealous of Renaia and undermines their relationship since Norman is also a narcissist. There relationship provides fodder for the Freudian Nightmare scenarios that occur. Renaia’s true journey is to figure out how to move forward with her life and free herself of this drama. The deeper questions is, why did she choose to marry Norman in the first place? What part of her soul drove her to this level of dysfunction and why?

SIGMUND FREUD wants another chance at life. He’s got some unfinished business from his previous lifetime that has to do with his first, great love, a wholesome country girl whom he abandoned because of his family’s own dysfunction and desire for him to be highly educated. He has chosen Renaia as his future mother for reasons that aren’t fully revealed until the third act. At first blush, it looks like he chose Renaia as his mother so he could reincarnate and set the record straight with his father being a fanatic follower of Freud’s theories. Sigmund first appears in their bedroom as she’s trying to seduce him to have unprotected sex, then follows her everywhere until she ‘breaks through’ and finally sees him in all his ghost-like glory. At first, she’s freaked out and thinks she might be having a schizophrenic or psychotic episode due to the heavy dose of fertility drugs she is secretly taking. Her close friend and co-owner at the yoga studio, ELLA LAZAROVICH also works as a medium and sees Sigmund’s spirit before Renaia does. Ella reassures Renaia that she’s not crazy, just encumbered with the spirit of one of the greatest minds of the last century, “Sigmund Fucking Freud."“.

Set in any affluent suburb outside of a big city, their lavish lifestyle gives rise to various Freudian-inspired family dysfunction, coupled with the evil underpinnings of white privilege. As classic Narcissists, Norman and Kimmy have little empathy for Renaia and encourage a plethora of sexual behaviors that range from unhealthy to downright disturbing. This dark comedy celebrates the resilience of the spirit and explores the interplay between Freud’s theory of the libido and a more profound illumination of the soul, both of which have a great impact on our behavior, our emotions, and our lives.

A series of ‘Freudian nightmares’ drive the plot forward, bringing Renaia and Sigmund to a revealing moment when they discover that Norman has “banked” some sperm in anticipation of his vasectomy. As Renaia is about to get artificially inseminated with it and give Sigmund another chance to be reincarnated, unbeknownst to Norman, Sigmund stops her and reveals a darker secret about Norman and his infidelity, one that makes them realize how unhappy and trapped she’ll be if she has his baby. Sigmund loves Renaia too much to rob her of happiness in her future. She halts the artificial insemination procedure and leaves Norman for good. Kimmy gets her dad all to herself. Renaia gets a second chance to find happiness. Sigmund forfeits his reincarnation out of love for Renaia that he has carried with him in his soul since his last lifetime.

Ella applauds Renaia’s decision to divorce Norman and helps her see the bigger picture. She hypnotizes Renaia into a past life regression, which reveals her romance with Sigmund from their previous lifetimes. Renaia was his first, great love, a young, country girl named, Gisela Fluss. Though he was always in love with her, he never married her due to pressure from his own mother to live in Vienna and to marry within his religion (Jewish). Sigmund loved Gisella throughout his entire life, but they were never truly reunited until now.

The final scene takes place one year later as Renaia nurses her new baby girl and lives with a sexy, younger man, their gardner who she has always had a thing for. The baby gives Renaia the ‘signal’ that Sigmund had promised Renaia he’d give her when they parted so she’d know that it was really him incarnated in her baby. The signal to ‘play with her breast’ could be just normal baby behavior or it could be him. There’s no way to know for sure, but the real truth is that some experiences continue to resonate in our souls long after the interaction is over. In other words, love never dies.

FREUDIAN NIGHTMARE

View screenplay
Nate Rymer

Rated this content

Tasha Lewis

Rated this content

register for stage 32 Register / Log In