A MULTI-AWARD winning show about a little-understood mental health condition returns to Scotland next month as part of the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival, Mayfesto and the Dumfries and Galloway Arts Festival.
Electrolyte is an upbeat and accessible gig theatre show exploring a woman’s experience of psychosis while attempting to start a new life. Its run at Edinburgh’s Pleasance last August sold out and earned numerous awards for Wildcard Theatre, the young company behind the show. Among Electrolyte’s accolades is last year’s Mental Health Fringe Award, awarded by the Mental Health Foundation in recognition of the most outstanding show exploring mental health at the Fringe.
READ MORE: Mental Health Arts Festival aims to reach out and make connections
Olivia Sweeney stars as Jessie, a young woman responding to the recent suicide of her father by partying hard. After meeting charismatic singer-songwriter Allie Touch (musician/composer Maimuna Memon) at a gig in Leeds, she decides to head to London to search for her estranged mother.
Using spoken-word poetry and original music performed by six multi-instrumentalists, Electrolyte has frequently inspired standing ovations and a queue of people eager to talk with the cast after the show.
Andrew Eaton-Lewis, arts lead for the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival (SMHAF), says the gig-theatre format adds to Electrolyte’s appeal.
“Because Olivia is singing directly to you and the music is such a strong part of the show, by the end you feel such a strong connection to the people on stage,” he says.
Eaton-Lewis says Wildcard approached the Mental Health Foundation for training in how best to respond to people wanting to share their experiences.
“I’ve not seen anything like it before; people were swept up by the protagonist’s story of experiencing psychosis,” says Wildcard’s co-artistic director James Meteyard.
Meteyard, who also performs in Electrolyte, wrote the show after a close family member experienced a period of psychosis, a condition the NHS says the main symptoms of which are hallucinations and delusions – where a person has strong beliefs not shared by others.
“It was a scary time as we lost this person in a place in their mind,” says Meteyard. “This was a person who had had no history of mental health problems. That made me realise a couple of main things: how easily this could happen to anybody and the power of the mind. The fantasies they were coming out with were unbelievable and yet there was total belief in them – and a frustration that I didn’t share them.”
The script Meteyard developed with Sweeney and the rest of the cast also tells of the potential for recovery.
“There are loads of productions which show how mental ill health can be damaging and that’s a totally valid story to tell,” he says. “But equally people do recover and people live with mental health problems on a daily basis. The idea that these conditions are abnormal is ridiculous – we are shown that at the end of every show when people share their experiences with us.”
May 14, Traverse, Edinburgh, 7.30pm, £15, £5 to £10 cons. Tel: 0131 228 1404. www.traverse.co.uk
May 15 to 18, Tron Theare, Glasgow, 8pm, £11, £8.50 concs. Tel: 0141 552 4267. www.tron.co.uk
www.mhfestival.com
As part of Dumfries and Galloway Arts Festival: May 30, Corner House Hotel, Annan, 7.30pm; May 31, Castle Douglas Town Hall, 7.30pm; June 1 Stranraer FC Fitba Bar, Stranraer: £14, £7 under 25s. Book at www.ticketsource.co.uk/event/304760. www.wildcardtheatre.co.uk
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