WRITINGS: SCRIPTS: ACTS OF MADNESS
ACTS OF MADNESS was performed at The Nettlefold Theatre in August 2004 to superb reviews. Click here to read just one of them.
OPENING SCENE:
INT PSYCHIATRIC WARD TV ROOM DAY
DANA is the only person in the room. She watching TV and looking bored.
MIKE/JESUS, a fellow patient comes into the room.
MIKE/JESUS
What’s on TV, Dana?
DANA
The same old shit.
MIKE/JESUS
I went into the kitchen to
see what we’re having for lunch.
DANA
What are we having?
MIKE/JESUS
Macaroni cheese. I’m gonna head back in
there and make sure I have enough for the
5000.
DANA
Good one, Jesus.
MIKE/JESUS leaves the room and bumps into the nurse coming into the room.
NURSE
Awright, Mike!
MIKE/JESUS
It’s Jesus, man!
NURSE
Dana, your psychiatrist wants to see you.
DANA gets up half-heartedly.
SCENE CHANGE:
INT PSYCH WARD OFFICE DAY
DANA enters and slumps into a seat.
PSYCHIARTRIST
How are you, Dana?
DANA
Bored out of my mind. I want out of this
ward. I want to go home.
PSYCHIARTRIST
When you’re better… Do you still think people
are watching you?
DANA
People are watching me. How can you not see
them? They are right there!
She gets up and goes over to directly face the audience, and picks out the characteristics of audience members.
DANA
How can you not see them? There’s a woman
in red there. And a bloke over there in a dodgy
toupee.
PSYCHIARTRIST
There is only a wall there.
DANA
Yeas, a wall you built. They are watching my
every move.
PSYCHIARTRIST
Why’s that, then?
DANA
I dunno. Ask them.
She goes into audience and points to one person.
DANA
Look, here’s someone. Ask them.
PSYCHIARTRIST
There’s no one there.
I want you to get better and feel better, so I
am going to increase your medication.
DANA
No, I don’t want more medication. It makes me
feel sick and messes up my vision. Do drug
companies give you commission or something?
The Psych looks at the mug he raised to his lips; it is emblazoned with a drug name. He quickly puts it away.
PSYCHIARTRIST
(ignoring her)
Don’t be silly. We want you to feel better.
DANA
It seems to me I’m taking the medication to make
you feel better.
PSYCHIARTRIST
You can leave now.
DANA gets up and looks into the audience and gestures the psych is crazy. The shrink doesn’t even look up.
SCENE CHANGE:
INT PSYCH WARD TV ROOM DAY
DANA is in the TV room again, curled up in a chair.
MIKE/JESUS
Not watching TV?
DANA
It’s these drugs, man. They make my vision
blurred. I can’t watch TV, can’t read, can’t write,
can’t do anything.
MIKE/JESUS
No worries – I’ll heal you.
He goes over to DANA and lays his hands on her
head. A NURSE enters the room.
NURSE
Mike, leave her alone!
MIKE/JESUS
I’m only healing her.
NURSE
Come on, Dana, your psychiatrist wants to
see you.
DANA
Later, Jesus.
MIKE/JESUS
See ya, Dana.
SCENE CHANGE
INT PSYCH OFFICE DAY
PSYCHIARTRIST
How are you, Dana?
DANA shrugs.
PSYCHIARTRIST
Can you see anyone watching you?
DANA squints towards the audience.
DANA
No, I can’t see anything.
PSYCHIARTRIST
Don’t you feel much better now?
DANA
(flatly)
Yeah, great.
PSYCHIARTRIST
If this progress continues, you’ll be able
to leave soon.
DANA
(sarcastically)
Thank you.
She gets up and leaves the room. The psychiatrist faces the audience.
PSYCHIARTRIST
It’s amazing what some people see.
SCENE CHANGE:
The nurse takes Dana to the consulting room again.
Spotlight on a woman sitting on a chair, head in hands.
DANA
I keep hearing voices, horrible voices
that won’t shut up. They keep going
on and on and on…
The light widens to include a psychiatrist on her left, stuffed and uppity, with clipboard and pen.
PSYCHIATRIST
That’s why I’m here, to help you get rid of these horrible voices.
DANA
Then what are you doing still sitting here?
PSYCHIATRIST
Are you hearing a voice right now?
DANA
Of course, (she stares at the psych)
I can hear you loud and clear, and
as usual you are talking a bunch of bullshit.
The light widens further to include the woman’s madness. A person, slouching on a chair, looking bored, wearing a T-shirt saying: MY MUM WENT TO SANITY AND ALL SHE GOT ME WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT
VOICE
Yeah, tell him. Tell him he’s talking rubbish as usual.
PSYCHIATRIST
I’m only here to help you. We just want
what’s best for you.
DANA
Best for me? Best for me? Locking me up is
best for me? Drugging me so much that
you turn me into a zombie is helping me?
Do you really expect me to live the rest
of my life as a zombie?
VOICE
Yeah, tell the bastard. Why
are you even having a conversation
with this idiot?
DANA
(looking at the VOICE)
Will you shut up! I can’t hear myself think!
PSYCH
Obviously you’re still not well, so I’m
going to increase your medication.
DANA
No, no!
VOICE
Listen to me, I’m the only one that
cares for you. I can make you God
or a Queen, I can give you magical powers
– you’ll be able to read minds. What do
you prefer to be? God or a queen? Or always
subservient to these arseholes. You can never be more than a set of symptoms
to them, a piece of shit on their shoes.
DANA
I know that!
VOICE
When doctors remove a cancer, they
look on it with disgust. The cancer in you
is you, baby – to them.
DANA
(forcefully)
No more medication. Is the best you
can give my pain a sedating drug, so I
won’t be much of a nuisance to you
and the rest of society? How about
improving my quality of life and getting
me out of the slum I live in? Or letting
me leave the ward once in a while, I’m sick
of staring at these 4 walls. Well, 3 walls
and an audience.
PSYCHIATRIST
Audience? Not that again. You
are obviously sick. I know what’s best.
It’s dangerous to listen to voices that hurt you.
DANA
My point exactly.
PSYCHIATRIST
We need to damp down these voices.
The drug you were on did that, why
did you stop taking it?
DANA
I haven’t laughed or cried in years on these drugs.
PSYCHIATRIST
Don’t you worry, we’ll make being human a psychiatric disorder.
VOICE
Ha, ha! That guy cracks me up. This is guardian
of reality, the teller of ultimate truth? What a joke.
PSYCH
Listen to me.
VOICE
Listen to me.
Dana turns her head side to side to listen to them. Soon she is shaking her head violently. Dana then springs from her chair.
DANA
That’s it! I’ve had it with the both of you.
Where is MY voice in all this? I’m outta here.
I can’t listen to you. I need to know what
my own voice sounds like.
PSYCHIATRIST
You can’t do that! You have to stick to the script.
VOICE
Yeah, stick to the script!
DANA
Piss off!
PSY AND VOICE:
(together)
Boy, does she like the sound of her own voice.
PSYCHIARTRIST
Don’t worry, nobody will listen to her.
The Voice nods.
DANA
I’m going to listen to my own voice.
She walks from the consulting room to the psych ward TV room.
DANA
This is madness
Back in the consulting room:
VOICE
Wanna game of chess?
He puts a chessboard on the vacated chair.
The Psy nods.
PSY
The games people play, eh?
THE PERFORMANCE OF THE POEM ‘THIS IS MADNESS’
by ‘Jesus’. He is dragged away by a nurse.
SCENE CHANGE:
DANA enters the TV room and sees a dosed-up Jesus.
DANA
Jesus?
JESUS
Hey, Dana.
DANA walks over and sits down next to him.
DANA
What happened to you?
JESUS
Fucking hell, they dosed me up.
DANA
Do you feel any different? Do you feel cured?
JESUS
Ha! The cure is to make me too tired, too weak to do anything.
The medication has made my mind so foggy
I have no idea what to do next. I know I have to do
something important. Was it save the world? I can’t
remember any more. I’m going to end up just like my
deadbeat dad.
DANA
Yeah, my medication has turned my life into one long
side effect too.
JESUS
Why haven’t left this shithole? I thought you were allowed to go home.
DANA
Because I don’t really have one. It’s a mad world out
there. We’re thrown into a community that couldn’t
care less. I want nothing of it.
JESUS
So are you going to stay here then?
DANA
No, forget that.
JESUS
So where do we go from here?
DANA
I’m thinking of ending it all.
JESUS
Can you really cross the line though?
DANA
Yes, I’ve had enough drama in my life. I want out.
I mean, where else can I go?
MIKE/JESUS shrugs.
DANA
Do you want to come too?
JESUS
No, I’m waiting to be crucified. When are you
going to cross the line?
DANA
There’s no time like the present.
DANA gets up and walks towards the audience. She pauses thoughtfully at the line she has to cross, before stepping into the audience and joining them. She sits with them and says: ‘What are we watching?
END
REVIEW OF ACTS OF MADNESS
Taking “Acts of Madness” to the stage
By Niki Mylonas
Is there no end to the natural gifts of the members of ‘Mindfull Productions’?
In August, some members of the organisation performed a play ‘Acts of
Madness’ by the Writer, Director, Film-maker, Poet and Performer Dolly
Sen. Following her much acclaimed published book, ‘The World is Full
of Laughter, a succession of performance roles around Europe and Award Winning
Poetry judged by Andrew Motion, poet laureate, Dolly pulled off her thought
provoking message on how Mental Health is approached in our society by delivering
it in the form of performance art at ‘The Nettlefold’ in Norwood.
The play focuses around Dana (O’Matsu-Hana Ramsoondar) a patient in a Psychiatric Unit who sees images (the audience) and hears a voice who continually nags her about making decisions and in whom she should place her trust. Although Dana sees visions and voices that are real to her, but invisible and silent to those treating her ‘condition’, the character comes across as an intelligent, coherent, lively, funny young woman desperately wanting to be helped without the need of drugs.
Dana’s psychiatrist (Lloyd Lindsay), insists on her medication be increased
the moment she ‘hallucinates’ and feels that she is much improved
when dosed up to the hilt with chemicals.
Dana wants to be helped in a ‘therapeutic’ manner by people who
care and eloquently expresses this method of healing to her doctor whom takes
advantage of his high-ranking position and hence thinks he knows what is in
his patient’s best interests. He infuriatingly refuses to release her
from the drug’s ‘zombie’ side effects (which temporarily
‘numbs’ the distress instead of ‘curing’ it) and from
the Institution itself.
Powerless to discharge herself from the clutches of the Mental Health System, Dana, amazingly, comes to a huge and final decision once talking to fellow patient Mike (Devon Marston), by taking charge of her life. She rejects her treatment, which despite her refusal of administration is forced to take, abandons the bullying ‘voice’ that is constantly by her side tormenting her mind and ends the play by setting herself ‘free’. Dana releases herself from the ‘prison’ and all who would have eventually been ultimately responsible for her untimely death by taking her own life, but in a way that made one feel she ‘jumped’ into a new beginning.
The piece had some comical and riveting moments with a touching character like Dana, another who thinks he is Christ, whom Dana related to immensely and in turn, Dana having the last say by making a mockery of Psychiatry by endeavouring to ‘educate’ the pompous Medic in how best he could have achieved positive results in her treatment if only he’d listen to his patient. Dana sums up the ‘System’ as being a ‘joke’ of drug experimentation instead of a team of genuinely empathetic humans wanting to ‘heal’.
The play opened up several questions as to what sanity is, and what really makes someone insane. Who has the right to say what is ‘normal’ and what isn’t? Surely, we all possess a balance of both these biological functions for it is impossible to have one with out the other? Opposites, negatives and positives, aren’t these mirrors of each other? They exist and they are part of all of us, are they not? How much is known of the human brain to determine our ultimate understanding of an individual’s disposition? What, other than drugs are used as treatments for Mentally Distressed People?
It is enormously frightening that even today in the 21st Century, Society’s knowledge of Mental Health awareness is both limited and primitive, and how a majority can easily dismiss the role they play in destroying individual and troubled souls due to an inability to care and understand, which can sometimes result in tragic consequences.
Let us hope Mindfull Productions and Creative Routes will continue to enlighten the ignorant and fill the planet with their unique talents and powerful voices.
By Niki Mylonas for Artery Magazine