Osceola County School for the Arts presents One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

The Osceola County School for the Arts presents One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest for 3 days only: April 28th, 29th, & 30th at 7pm.

Located at 3151 N. Orange Blossom Trail, Kissimmee, FL 34744

Adults - $10; Students - $5 Tickets can be purchased at the door

You DO NOT want to miss this show!!! A phenomenal show be some of the most talented students in the Central Florida area.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest takes place in a mental institution in the Pacific Northwest. The institution is dominated by Nurse Rathced, a cold, precise woman with calculated gestures and a calm, mechanical manner. When the story begins, a new patient, Randall P. McMurphy, arrives at the ward. He is a self-professed "gambling fool" who has just come from a work farm at Pendleton but is completely sane and lucid. He is at the hospital only to avoid the work detail.

McMurphy confronts the patients about the way the inmates defer to Ratched so readily. He suggests it is a "pecking-party" in which the patients are to turn on each other. Harding admits that all of the patients and even Dr. Spivey are afraid of the Big Nurse. He adds that the patients are rabbits who cannot adjust to their rabbithood and need Big Nurse to show them their place. McMurphy bets him that he can get Nurse Ratched to crack within a week.

The patients gradually grow more assertive in their opposition to Ratched. McMurphy continues to behave aggressively, but Ratched does not respond. McMurphy gives up his struggle against her, knowing that she controls whether or not he leaves.

He confronts Harding and the other patients about why they never told him directly that Nurse Ratched controls whether or not he leaves. They claim to have forgotten he was involuntarily committed, for with rare exceptions, all of the others entered the hospital voluntarily. McMurphy cannot conceive that these men would choose to live in the hospital, but Billy tells him that they are too weak to leave.

McMurphy realizes that Chief Bromden is neither deaf nor dumb. One night McMurphy offers Bromden a pack of chewing gum and gets him to speak about his family. McMurphy suggests that Bromden pick up the control panel and throw it through the window so that he can escape.

Nurse Ratched makes her next move against McMurphy by posting the patients' financial statements, which show that McMurphy has made a profit against the other patients since he arrived. She suggests in a meeting that McMurphy is trying to manipulate them. But the patients do not fall for Ratcheds ruse.

After a fight breaks out between McMurphy and Aide Warren, where Chief Bromden steps in and takes down two of the Aides, they are sent to receive electroshock therapy.

McMurphy claims that the electroshock therapy energizes him.

Harding and the other patients decide to engineer McMurphy's escape when Candy arrives on a Saturday night for her meeting with Billy. They bribe Mr. Turkle, the night watchman, with liquor and the other patients have a party that night.

When Nurse Ratched arrives, she gathers the patients together in one room to take roll. She realizes that Billy Bibbit is missing. He is found him in the Seclusion Room with Candy. She chastises him for having sex with such a cheap woman, then tells him that she will tell his mother. Billy begins to stutter at this, but she takes him into the doctor's office to calm down. When the doctor arrives, he finds that Billy has cut his throat and killed himself. Ratched blames McMurphy for Billy's suicide, and he responds by trying to strangle her.

Weeks later, McMurphy returns to the ward, now comatose after having a forced lobotomy. Chief Bromden smothers McMurphy with a pillow in order to put him out of his misery, then rips up the control panel and escapes the institution, fulfilling McMurphy's escape plan for himself.

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