I NEED HELP

[dramaturgy]

For Maxine's class I need to think about a dramaturg-driven project and find someone to collaborate on it with, and I'm worried about that so if you're a theatre professional in the New York area you should do karma a favor and contact meeeeeeeeee, but for now I am just looking for help.

I need to know about plays and musicals that somehow feature mental illness. Here's my list so far:

Next to Normal
Proof
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Hamlet
Three Days of Rain


... As you can see, I need help. >_> So give me some lists, give me some ideas, help me out. I'll even take books and movies, even though I wanted to stick to theatre. I want to focus on mentally ill main characters, where the illness is part of the plot and faced, rather than be something from a secondary character that affects the protagonist (i.e. mentally ill parent of a child -- I would put Running With Scissors in this category, for example) or played for a laugh. I am so tired of mental illness being played for a laugh.

So please, add your own, advertise this post, help a sister out.

Comments

[dramaturgy.livejournal.com]

Those are good ones.

I honestly don't know what I'm looking for. One of my soapboxes recently (especially since getting to know N2N a bit better as a show and not just the music) has become pieces of theatre or culture that actually deal with mental illness. It's only recently become something that people are comfortable with talking about for whatever reason; it's not as big a cultural taboo as it was, so I think society is starting to look at it with more sensitivity, and it's not just something that's being used as a plot device or comic relief.

And I don't know what I'm going to do with it, but it's something that I need to say and get off my chest, so I suppose that's as good a place as any to start.

[thinkatory.livejournal.com]

Just looking at this question it's interesting how mental illness used to be coded and kind of implied rather than addressed, like you said. It'd be interesting to compare N2N's Diana to Tennessee Williams's Laura or Blanche but now I'm showing my biases. XD

[dramaturgy.livejournal.com]

Yeah, exactly. Or even in Hamlet, when the question is when does the madness start -- we've had that discussion, I think, I was kind of half asleep when we watched Tennant, but we kind of had the discussion. XD But when does the madness start, and even then it's still not really a question of how much of this illness is physical v. psychological -- because there is certainly a physiological or genetic element to certain things.

Blah. I'm babbling. I have to go get something to eat before I see ORLANDO PROD AND BEN SKOLL THIS IS GOING TO BE EPIC the play. >_>