Performance, Madness and Psychiatry

Performance, Madness and Psychiatry

Also by Juliet Foster JOURNEYS THROUGH MENTAL ILLNESS: Clients Experiences and Understandings of Mental Distress

Performance, Madness and Psychiatry Isolated Acts Edited by Anna Harpin University of Exeter, UK and Juliet Foster University of Cambridge, UK

Selection, introduction, conclusion and editorial matter Anna Harpin and Juliet Foster 2014 Individual chapters Contributors 2014 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-33724-5 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6 10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2014 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-46374-9 ISBN 978-1-137-33725-2 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9781137337252 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India.

To all the women, men and children who have spent time in the spaces discussed in this book

This page intentionally left blank

Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors ix xi xii Introduction: Locating Madness and Performance 1 Anna Harpin and Juliet Foster Section I Historical Perspectives 1 Smart s Authority and the Eighteenth-Century Mad-Business 19 Richard Stern 2 Performance in Bethlem, Fulbourn and Brookwood Hospitals: A Social Psychological and Social Historical Examination 42 Juliet Foster Section II Applying Performance 3 A Life of their Own: Reflections on Autonomy and Ethics in Research-Based Theatre 65 Susan M. Cox 4 Whose Mind is it Anyway?: Acting and Mental Illness 85 Sarah Rudolph Section III Contemporary Practices 5 Start Making Sense 111 Dylan Tighe 6 No one ever listens : Body, Space and History in RedCape Theatre s The Idiot Colony 137 Rebecca Loukes Section IV Theatrical Maladies 7 Ophelia Confined: Madness and Infantilisation in Some Versions of Hamlet 165 Bridget Escolme 8 Dislocated: Metaphors of Madness in British Theatre 187 Anna Harpin vii

viii Contents Afterword: Relocating Madness 216 Anna Harpin and Juliet Foster Select Bibliography 219 Index 224

List of Illustrations 2.1 Programme for A N**ger Entertainment, performed in 1881 at Fulbourn Asylum. Photo: Juliet Foster, courtesy of Cambridgeshire County Archives 49 2.2 A Nativity tableau performed by staff at Bethlem Hospital, Christmas 1933. Image reproduced with permission of, and thanks to, Bethlem Art and History Collections Trust 52 5.1 Dylan Tighe in RECORD, Half Moon Theatre, Cork, 2012. Photo: Ros Kavanagh 112 5.2 Aoife Duffin, Daniel Reardon and drummer Conor Murray in RECORD, Half Moon Theatre, Cork, 2012. Photo: Ros Kavanagh 117 5.3 Dylan Tighe in RECORD, Half Moon Theatre, Cork 2012. Photo: Ros Kavanagh 125 5.4 Dylan Tighe and Aoife Duffin (with Conor Murray on drums and Peter Green on screen) in the final moments of RECORD, Half Moon Theatre, Cork, 2012. Photo: Ros Kavanagh 133 6.1 The Idiot Colony. Photo: Nik Mackey, courtesy of Turtle Key Arts 137 6.2 The Idiot Colony, a section of text from the first Wallpaper exercise. Photo: Rebecca Loukes 142 6.3 The Idiot Colony, Victoria drowning. Photo: Lisle Turner 144 6.4 The Idiot Colony, Joy. Photo: Lisle Turner 145 6.5 The Idiot Colony, Mary. Photo: Lisle Turner 146 6.6 The Idiot Colony, Victoria being bathed in Scene 4. Photo: Lisle Turner 148 6.7 The Idiot Colony, Mary s baby. Photo: Lisle Turner 156 8.1 4.48 Psychosis, TR Warsaw, King s Theatre, Edinburgh International Festival 2008. Image with kind permission of Stefan Okolowicz 191 ix

x List of Illustrations 8.2 4.48 Psychosis, Arcola Theatre, London, 2006. Photo by Alice Lambert with kind permission of Alice and Tangram Theatre 191 8.3 4.48 Psychosis, St Ann s Warehouse, New York, October 2004. Image with kind permission of Dan Merlo, danmerlo.com 192 8.4 Antony Gormley, Blind Light, 2007. Photo: Stephen White Antony Gormley, courtesy of White Cube 193

Acknowledgements We would like to thank a number of colleagues, friends, and institutions for their kind support in the development of this book. Firstly, this book would not have been possible without the generous support of the AHRC. The initial grant funding allowed us to spend 18 months working with a fascinating and diverse group of people who have directly and indirectly contributed enormously to this publication. In that regard we would very much like to thank the members of the network: Jehannine Austin, Peter Barham, Carina Bartleet, Paul Crawford, Susan M. Cox, Mark Davis, Bridget Escolme, David Granirer and Stand Up for Mental Health, Liam Jarvis and Analogue Theatre, Ellen Kaplan, Rebecca Loukes and RedCape Theatre, Julie McNamara and Vital Xposure, Keith Palmer and The Comedy School London, Steve Hennessy and Stepping Out Theatre Company, Kay Redfield Jamison, Sarah Rudolph, Dylan Tighe, Tiffany Watt-Smith, and Carla Yanni. We would also like to extend our thanks to all those who attended the Confined Spaces conference in September 2012 and shared their fascinating work. The grant was also enormously supported by the generous work of Hannah Cummings, Gabriella Giannachi, Peter Hulton, Dorinda Hulton, and Erin Walcon in the development and documentation of the grant and its activities. We were also greatly helped by the administrative and technical support from both the University of Cambridge and the University of Exeter. In particular we must thank Nela Kapelan, Mavis Gutu, Jon Primrose, and Chris Mearing. In the course of the research, writing, reviewing, and editing of the manuscript we were helped by a number of people. In this regard we would like to extend our thanks to Jerri Daboo, Patrick Duggan, Bryce Lease, Jane Milling, Kate Newey, Kara Reilly, Peter Thomson, Elliot Mayhew, Julien Pooley, Colin Gale, and everyone in Cambridgeshire County Archives. We are also very grateful for the commentaries offered by the peer reviewers in the early stages of the development of the book. The comments were perceptive and constructive. Finally, we must say a special thank you to Paula Kennedy and her team at Palgrave, and in particular Peter Cary and Barbara Slater. Paula s detailed and patient feedback and advice, and Peter and Barbara s editorial support has been invaluable. Thank you. xi

Notes on Contributors Susan M. Cox is an Associate Professor in the W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics and the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia. She is a sociologist and qualitative health researcher. Her work applies the methods of the social sciences to applied ethics research and practice. Her research focuses on: (1) the use of arts-based methods in health research, (2) research ethics, especially the experiences of human subjects in health research, and (3) illness experiences throughout the life course, especially as they are shaped by and reflected through narrative. Susan is a member of the Advisory Council for the Arts Health Network Canada and serves as a member of the Research Ethics Board at Emily Carr University of Art & Design. She is especially interested in ethical aspects of arts-based research and is currently collaborating with colleagues in Melbourne to create new ethical guidelines for visual research. She has published in Social Science and Medicine, Academic Ethics, Medical Ethics, Journal of Empirical Research on Research Ethics, Sociology of Health and Illness, and Health Law Review. She also writes poetry. Bridget Escolme is a Reader in Drama at Queen Mary, University of London and has worked as a school teacher, a dramaturg, a performer, and a director. She currently teaches and researches in the area of Shakespeare and his contemporaries in performance, spatial practice in the theatre, costume history, and the history of the performance of mental illness. She is the author of Emotional Excess on the Shakespearean Stage: Passion s Slaves (2013), Talking to the Audience: Shakespeare, Performance, Self (2005), and Antony and Cleopatra in the Palgrave Shakespeare Handbooks series (2006). She has also recently edited a collection of essays with Stuart Hampton-Reeves entitled Shakespeare and the Making of Theatre (Palgrave 2013) and published articles in journals including Shakespeare Bulletin and Shakespeare Survey. She is a member of the Architectural Research Group at Shakespeare s Globe and has contributed lectures and programme essays for Shakespeare productions at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, the Globe, and the RSC. Juliet Foster is a Lecturer in Social Psychology at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow and Senior Tutor of Murray Edwards College. She has a particular interest in the development and maintenance of xii

Notes on Contributors xiii knowledge and understandings, and specialises in social representations theory. Much of her work has focused on issues surrounding understandings of mental health problems, and has included studies on representations amongst the general public and within the media, as well as amongst people who use mental health services. Juliet is especially interested in the ways in which historical perspectives can inform studies of the ways in which knowledge and understanding change and develop within social psychology. She specialises in qualitative analysis. Anna Harpin is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Exeter. Her research examines post-war British and Irish theatre and film with particular interests in madness, trauma, and questions of representation. She has recently published articles in Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, Contemporary Theatre Review, Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, Performance Research, and Studies in Theatre and Performance. She is currently writing a monograph entitled Disordered: Madness and Cultural Representation. Anna is a member of the Madness and Literature Network, and the International Health Humanities Network. She is also a Fellow of the Institute for Mental Health. Alongside her academic work she is a writer and director for her theatre company Idiot Child. Rebecca Loukes is an actor-deviser and practitioner working with psychophysical approaches to training and performance. She trained in the body awareness practices of Elsa Gindler with Eva Schmale (Germany) and Charlotte Selver (USA) and Asian martial/meditation arts with Phillip Zarrilli (UK). She is co-founder and co-artistic director of RedCape Theatre, Associate Editor of Theatre, Dance and Performance Training Journal, and is Senior Lecturer in Drama at the University of Exeter. Sarah Rudolph teaches theatre and directs the theatre program at the University of Wisconsin-Marathon County where she has been since completing her PhD in Theatre and Drama at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1991. This position ensures hands on involvement in all aspects of production. She strives to connect theatre, through practice and scholarship, to social issues and has a particular interest in the representation of mental illness. She has been involved in the Association of Theatre in Higher Education, specifically the Theatre as a Liberal Art focus group, as well as the American Culture/Popular Culture Association. Richard Stern is doing a PhD at Queen Mary, London, on madness, authority, and poetic diction in the eighteenth century, with

xiv Notes on Contributors particular interest in the work of Christopher Smart, William Cowper, and William Blake. He studied English and American literature at UEA, and then Leeds, before working as a teacher in Italy. He then trained as a mental health nurse and now combines nursing with academic study. Dylan Tighe is an actor, musician, writer and theatre-maker. He holds a BA in Spanish and Italian from Trinity College Dublin and an MA in Performance from Goldsmiths College London. Work includes No Worst There is None at the Dublin Theatre Festival 2009 which won Best Production at the 2009 Irish Times Theatre Awards and was nominated for Best Director and Best Sound Design, The Trailer of Bridget Dinnigan a version of Lorca s The House of Bernarda Alba, created with and featuring 11 Irish Traveller women Journey to the End of the Night, based on Tighe s personal diary of a journey on the trans-mongolian Express, and Medea/Medea (Gate Theatre London, winner of the 2009 Gate/Headlong New Directions Award). In 2012 Dylan created RECORD, a project that consists of an album, a theatre performance and a series of talks and events. A radio version for RT9 was nominated for the Prix Europa 2013. Dylan s essay on the Italian theatre company Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio appeared in the book That Was Us : Contemporary Irish Theatre and Performance (2013).