Headaches. Bad dreams. Suicide attempts. Buying 29 handbags and 12 fire extinguishers. Baking 400 cupcakes. Clouds passing by the brain…
|||Headaches. Bad dreams. Suicide attempts. Buying 29 handbags and 12 fire extinguishers. Baking 400 cupcakes. Clouds passing by the brain…These are some of the vivid images Sara (Jennifer Steyn) uses to describe the experience of her bipolar disorder (previously known as manic depression) in The Inconvenience of Wings.
The National Arts Festival theatre production featured by artist Lara Foot premiered on Sunday night.
“I’m not sure if I’m manic because I’m not sleeping, or not sleeping because I’m manic…you look into a mirror and you see this creature and you don’t even know the creature,” Sara's character exclaims.
She describes how her medication, lithium, made her feel drowsy, drunk, conservative and plain, while her husband Paul (Andrew Buckland) describes the maelstrom of emotions he experienced as he dealt with his wife’s condition.
“I feel scared for her, beyond furious, useless, desperate. I feel terrified for the children.”
The production gave a raw and brutally honest insight into the dysfunctional chaos caused by addiction, co-dependency and mental illness.
It’s one of a number of productions on this year’s programme which deals with difficult topics such as mental illness and disability – misunderstood conditions, coupled with stigma and marginalisation.
Foot said that having mental illness as the centre of her play would help to create an understanding of the condition and encourage the conversation around it.
“I think there’s a huge stigmaand people don’t speak about any mental disorder… It’s still a taboo. Families are affected enormously, having to live with whoever it is that has a disorder. If you can have a play and we can actually talk about it, I think it’s a very healthy thing.”
Foot said the production was largely informed by her personal experience of mental illness, but did not elaborate.
“I don’t like to speak much about my personal life, but let’s just say I’ve had a huge amount of experience and I’ve done an enormous amount of research.”
Meanwhile, Mncedisi Shabangu, who plays the role of the couple’s friend and psychiatry professor, James, said the play had made him aware of mental disorders.
“The first thing I said when I started reading the script was hau! In white people’s houses these are the problems, they are so complicated. In black houses, it’s very easy: either you’re sane or you’re mad.”
Another production, Les Cenci, directed by Gopala Davies, is based on the life of French poet Antonin Artaud’s lifelong struggle with mental illness.
Refusing to use disability as a reason to be marginalised, the cast of Sold! showed how inclusive theatre and an inclusive society was possible.
The dance show, choreographed and directed by Standard Bank Young Artist award winner for dance, Themba Mbuli, was a reincarnation of the four women whose skulls were part of the 20 skulls of Herero/Nama people who returned to Namibia.
Double amputee Zamukulungisa Sonjica and wheelchair-bound Nadine Mckenzie, who is paralysed from the waist down, played roles equal in value to those of the able-bodied cast members.
gabi.falanga@inl.co.za
The Star