(program excerpt)
Parting the Curtain: ‘Bipolar’ Realities
Written, Directed & Performed by: Rachel Rhoades
All visual art, music, writing and testimonies in this production come from people who consider themselves to be part of the bipolar community.
We are not here to romanticize. Or victimize. Or incriminate. Or prescribe.
People with mental illness are among those whose voices and stories are missing from the selective history that forms general public knowledge.
Please consider:
When you see or hear the word ‘Bipolar,’ what comes to mind?
Perhaps you envision…
- the final minutes of an ‘X-Files’ episode: Scully and Moulder creeping around the craggy corners of a cave where the genius bipolar chemist has hidden out for a week, armed to the teeth, obsessed with and capable of destroying the world
- Gwyneth Paltrow playing a substitute teacher on “Glee,” rocking an imaginary baby, head cocked to the side, eyes bugged out, saying, “I’m Mary Todd Lincoln, I can’t take care of my baby, I must be bipolar!”
- flashy headlines and Oscar jokes and late-night comedy show replays mocking Charlie Sheen
- a loved one … someone you once trusted … a colleague … a family member … a friend ... a stranger … in any combination
How about…
- Van Gogh’s Starry Starry Night … Jackson Pollock
- Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata … Robert Schumann ... Nirvana
- Edgar Alan Poe … Virginia Woolf … Jack London … Graham Greene
- Carrie Fisher … Catherine Zeta-Jones … Jean-Claude Van Damme
- Sinead O'Connor … Nina Simone ... Rosemary Clooney
Important Note:
If you identify as having Bipolar Disorder, you do not have to create an imaginative masterpiece in the traditional sense to be accepted and respected by the rest of the community. Solidarity has no terms.
However… every person on Earth, whether stamped with a diagnosis or not, has creativity worth stimulating and celebrating.
