Shira Keller of NRC interviewed Brecht and theatre makers Mattias Van de Vijver and Marina Orlova about psychological vulnerability in theatre. The original article can be found here .
Mental vulnerability as inspiration for theatre: 'I want to show that we can help each other'
Psychological vulnerability is a recurring theme among theatre makers. What motivates them to make performances about it? “I woke up and thought: huh, how strange, I don’t feel anything.”
Author: Shira Keller
Published on November 13, 2024
Reading time: 6 minutes
In 2017, something terrifying happened to actor Mattias Van de Vijver (38): he was unable to step out of his role. He played Julius Caesar, he says, in the eponymous production by Orkater. "I portrayed him as a megalomaniac rock star who trusts no one around him. The character infected me. His distrust got into my system. I had never experienced anything like it: I couldn't shake it off." It was the beginning of a dark period in his life, in which he would struggle with severe depression and serious panic attacks.
Now, seven years later, after a major therapeutic process, Van de Vijver is making the performance Orchestra Soledad , again at Orkater. In this performance, his first self-directed production, he wants his audience to experience what it is like to be in mental distress. "I have seen the core of a mental illness," he says. "I know the care system from the inside out. I know how much you need others, especially when you do everything you can to keep them at bay out of self-protection. I want to make this performance to show that we can help each other."
Mattias Van de Vijver during the rehearsal of Orchestra Soledad at Orkater. Photo Els Zweerink
Orchestra Soledad is not the only performance this season that focuses on mental vulnerability. For example, in I'm a Robot and I need Therapy , to be seen in Theater Frascati on November 13 and 14, performer Marina Orlova presents a live improvised therapy session with a depressed AI bot. And on location in De Kaai in Rotterdam, the performance Samen in zorg #1 will premiere at the end of this month, a project by Brecht Hermans, in which he organizes a theatrical encounter between the audience and people who struggle with mental challenges. And Theater Oostpool presents The Almighty Sometimes , about a teenage girl with bipolar disorder , while comedians Thomas van Luyn , Davey Turnhout and Ruud Smulders make autobiographical shows about ADHD, traumas and alcohol addiction respectively. Does it say something about the current era that mental vulnerability is so embraced by theater makers?
Therapy
Marina Orlova (36), originally from Russia, has been in therapy since she was eighteen, she says. She comes from a dysfunctional family, her childhood in Russia was marked by neglect and emotional abuse. Over the years, she was given a whole series of diagnoses – from ADHD to bipolar disorder, from depression to obsessive-compulsive disorder and complex post-traumatic stress disorder. And she spent 3.5 months in a Moscow mental health clinic, an experience that turned out to be traumatic in itself.
The way the mental health sector has treated her, not only in Russia but also in the Netherlands and Germany, still infuriates her, she says. “Within the capitalist, neo-liberal system, the question is not so much how to best help people with mental problems, but what method makes the most money,” she says.
“There is a focus on treating symptoms, because that is measurable, cheap and efficient. While the causes are usually primarily social in nature. Why are families dysfunctional? Because society does not take good care of them. You can compare it to incompetent parenting.” The mental health sector should therefore take more care of people as a parent, Orlova believes, “instead of isolating them or administering medication, depending on the extent to which they can still contribute to the economy.”
During Covid, Orlova interviewed people who, like her, identified as mentally unstable. She used their answers as a source for a “mentally unstable AI chatbot” with whom she will have a live conversation during her performance, and for whom she will, in a sense, act as a parent figure. In part, the creation of a depressed chatbot is a plea for diversity in the design of AI. “Because marginalized people have less space to speak out, they are hardly included in datasets. It is important to be aware of which data is used for AI. Who do you hear, who do you not hear?”
On the other hand, mentally supporting a chatbot is also an ironic reversal. Due to long waiting times for psychiatric care, AI is now frequently used to speak to people with mental health issues. “I find it scary that many of the actions we entrust to robots are actions that require humanity and empathy par excellence,” says Orlova. “Imagine a robot as a therapist. It’s a Black Mirror situation that has been practiced for years.”
Included
For Flemish theatre maker Brecht Hermans (39), it was his mother who introduced him to psychiatry. When he was eighteen, she was admitted to a psychiatric hospital due to sudden flashbacks of a childhood trauma. "What I remember from that," says Hermans, "is that my mother said that no one around her ever dared to ask how she was doing."
With his project Samen in zorg #1 he tries to bring people who are dealing with mental challenges into contact with each other and with an audience, in an attempt to break through stigmas surrounding psychiatric care. "Community theater", is what Hermans calls his work. "Because more happens than just that performance. We build a community together. A piece of society in which we can talk about mental challenges. In my eyes, building such a community is a work of art in itself."
Mattias Van de Vijver also experienced his mother's mental health issues as a teenager. "She raised my brothers, my sister and me with great love. But when I was about twelve, things started to go wrong. She suddenly seemed absent, even though she was there. She would answer when I asked something, but not to the question I had asked. Sometimes she would walk around town, but she couldn't remember how she got there. Sometimes she had trouble distinguishing between fantasy and reality."
She suffered from a dissociative disorder, it would become clear years later, a mental disorder in which the connection between mind and body is broken. But at that time Van de Vijver did not know that yet. "I just thought: what the fuck is going on ?"
In order not to lose his balance, Van de Vijver threw himself into his social life with full energy, and later also into his work. He now thinks that suppressing everything that was going on at home may have contributed to his own mental problems in 2017. "I remember waking up one morning and thinking: 'Huh, how strange, I don't feel anything.' The only thing I could feel was fear. That got worse and worse. I started rejecting everyone. Pure destruction. Everything and everyone felt unsafe. People were no longer allowed to touch me. The thought of sexual activity made me shudder. Thoughts got stuck in my head and kept repeating themselves like a broken record. That my child would die, for example. I lay awake all night long. When that became unbearable, my body tried to protect itself: I started to dissociate, just like my mother. Everything inside me became boiling hot, that's how it felt. Then I felt nauseous and started vomiting. And then I collapsed. I lay on the ground. An hour, a day, sometimes a week. Paralyzed. No longer able to do anything. That pattern repeated itself.”
After a long recovery period, in which he gradually learned to recognize signs of panic attacks and to keep his thoughts in check, Van de Vijver is now back in the rehearsal room. "I had to make this performance," he says. "I see colleagues dropping out due to depression and burn-outs. Society makes people sick. People are afraid, close themselves off, become isolated. You see what happened to me personally happening on a societal level."
To learn
In Orchestra Soledad, you as a spectator can experience what that feels like, dissociation. Van de Vijver uses not only images for this, but also music and singing. "The idea is that you as an audience end up in a grey area, where you no longer know what is real and what is fiction. I hope that spectators are prepared to open their fibres and let this story sink in. And above all: that they realise that people who go through this are not 'crazy'. They are you and me. My mother may have to take five pills a day to stay stable, but she is not crazy."
Hermans also emphasizes with his presentation that psychiatric diagnoses should not be considered a disqualification. "That is why I speak of mental challenges, not of a mental limitation. Instead of seeing a diagnosis as a deviation, you could also say: this makes someone special. Maybe we can learn something from it."
Orlova: "All those diagnoses I got are like reading a horoscope. Of course, everything is right, but it is generalized information. That way you lose sight of the fact that you are dealing with a complete person."
“I hope that spectators will ask themselves afterwards: what does this mean for me,” says Van de Vijver. “Do I know someone who needs a listening ear? And yes, I know that it is considered problematic to place such a responsibility on the individual. But it is about small things. Visit your neighbour and say: 'I am going to the shop, can I bring you a carton of milk?' I am convinced: if we were a little more aware of the value of such small gestures, and if we muster the courage to stand up for a more humane healthcare system, then politics will follow.”
Orchestra Soledad , by Orkater. Concept and direction: Mattias Van de Vijver. Tour December 12 to February 1. Info: orkater.nl
I'm a robot and I need therapy by Marina Orlova . On show: 13 and 14 Nov, Frascati, Amsterdam. Info: frascati.nl Samen in Zorg #1 by Brecht Hermans, coproduction Lab-Z . On show: 22 Nov - 1 Dec, De Kaai, Rotterdam. Info: theaterzuidplein.nl The Almighty Sometimes by Theater Oostpool . Director: Daria Bukvic. Tour: 16 Nov - 24 Jan. Info: oostpool.nl
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