This week, I’d like to kind of keep with last weeks’ post on relaxed performances. There are so many other ways to demonstrate theatre as therapy. This is an extremely personal topic for me, and I’m really going to put a lot out there, but as someone who has spent a very long time healing, I want to be heard, and I want to give some insight.
Just a bit of background on me. I have Rapid Cycling Bipolar Disorder, anxiety, and a few other mental health diagnoses. I have been battling depression and anxiety since I was eleven years old, and at thirty-three, have spent a lot of time in therapy, hospitals, and on meds. I think one of the few thing that has been in my life longer than mental health issues is theatre. For me, the two things are tied very closely together. There’s a lot to the idea, and not just in the sense that being a part of theatre has saved my life, or that seeing shows has always been like therapy to me. It’s just like what a RP can do for someone with those specific challenges.
There’s something about getting lost in another world when being in your own is too much. There’s something about that one little monologue or group that makes a difference, or how a comedic show can make you laugh when nothing else in the world can. That’s the magic of theatre, something that can take on a whole new meaning when you’re not in the best mindset. There are even those times where you see a character that embodies you onstage, and you realize you’re not all alone out there. Mental health topics can be so taboo, but that doesn’t mean you’re entirely in your bubble. There’s a ton out there to change your life. This post could go on forever, but those are the three specific things I want to talk about.
When I was fourteen, I was hospitalized twice for my mental health issues. I was in a very bad place, and didn’t feel like I had much going for me. Everything was empty and hopeless, and everything about my life felt way too hard. My acting teacher at the time had been so for about two years then, and he believed in me so much. I was going to quit classes. I didn’t think I could do it. But he wouldn’t let me. He told me all about the monologue he had picked for me, and refused to let me back down from it. This monologue, a section from a one woman play called The shape of a girl by Joan MacLeod changed my life. It even inspired me to write my own one woman play. All because an acting teacher refused to let me quit.
Around that time, I also became very involved in a youth ensemble at People’s Light called the New Voices Ensemble. Although those were some of the worst years of my life, my work with NV was some of the best times of my life. My fellow ensemble members and the adult leaders made an impact in my life that still has a place in my heart to this day. These are the people who saved my life. I’ve even done work on the opposite end of things, as an adult working with the youth.
This is how being a part of theatre was therapy for me. The material, my ensemble and classmates, and my teachers were able to do things for my mental health that no therapist or psychiatrist could ever do as well. When you’re a theatre kid, it’s a safe place, and it’s home.
Comedies? They’re great. Honestly, if given a choice, most of the time, I’m not going to choose to watch a comedy. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy them, though. Especially when I’m feeling my worst. It’s one thing to be sitting in a movie theater watching a comedy, but watching a comedic play has a completely different feel. I think it has something to do with everybody feeding off of the live energy. Actors may not be able to respond to the audience (outside of a show where this is encouraged), but there’s always an electricity in the air that everyone in that theatre can feel.
People’s Light always used to end their season with a comedy. And there were times in my life when I desperately needed that. Some of my fondest memories of seasons were those comedic ends. I think that’s because I needed that laugh, I needed that electricity in the air, knowing that the actors were having just as much fun up there as we were having watching the show. There were some times where those were the only moments I felt like I could laugh. I could put aside everything else for a couple hours and lose myself in laughter.
As mental health is becoming more and more talked about, we’re seeing more and more of it. Not that that means it hasn’t been there. I think about the character Harper in Tony Kushner’s iconic and groundbreaking show Angels in America. The character is agoraphobic and addicted to Valium in a show written over thirty years ago. However, my mind goes right to Diana from Next to Normal. Never before have I seen a character I can so identify with. Seeing the show, I suddenly felt represented. Like it wasn’t a shameful thing to have severe mental illnesses. I got to watch someone on stage that was showing the world these things. It wasn’t just me anymore…I wasn’t alone. And if that isn’t therapy, I don’t know what is.
I feel like I could go on and on about theatre as therapy. It has made such a difference in my battles with mental illnesses, and I know I’m not the only one out there. As long as there are still teachers, and plays, and characters in all aspects of the theatre world, there is that type of therapy that no one and nothing else can do for us.
Comments