According to Linde van Schuppen, philosopher and linguist, medics do not really listen to people with psychosis. At least, they do listen to someone suffering from obvious delusions, but that is to establish that the person is indeed off the track. 'But, how?" is the question a psychiatrist or neurologist is not trained to answer, she argues.
That's why Van Schuppen will soon receive his PhD on an investigation into exactly that 'how then?'. She talked about it in the 3 15-minute summer guests that took place every afternoon at Theatre Festival Boulevard under the banner 'Conversation of the Day'. Led by writer Jowi Schmitz, these were not awkward afterthoughts or incomprehensible pre-interviews with the offerings, but interesting exchanges of views in response to the festival programme. Which this time, therefore, rather often included mental illnesses.
Fewer pills
What stories are contained in psychoses, what narrative perspectives does a patient use to describe his world and what does such a psychotic actually get out of that story? It turns out to provide insights that enable other treatment methods. Fewer pills, more listening. Should be done more often.
And so we are just back in art. Because art is made up of stories, even though many an artist will be horrified by the modern trend of calling everything 'storytelling'. Sorry, post-dramatists, we even turn a cloud in the sky into a story, if you are not careful. That also happened on Saturday morning at Artemis' 'Summer'.
Bootcamp
This is how simple location theatre is: you put an audience in a landscape and call it theatre. Then everything visible there becomes theatre. An actor pulling a cart out of the water, or a club of clueless boot campers who suddenly find themselves being watched in their voluntary torture activity by a hundred or so curious festival visitors. Or a woman going for a swim, but dancing frenziedly in the cold water first: even non-actors suddenly discover their talents. Hieronymus Bosch Live.
So we walked in a colourful procession through de/the Bossche Broek, the beautiful marshland that lies right next to Den Bosch's historic city centre. A medieval pilgrimage, with the occasional passing scooter, as a rite of passage from countryside to city, from chestnut tree and flowerpot to music. Because that there is music in everything is also part of the regular learning moments of a theatre festival.
Ritual space
Another learning point: if a performance is for 18+, and it is performed by children aged 12-, you can expect discomfort. The Sheeptown project, I went there because of the word 'sheep' in the title, is the provisional apotheosis of a project by artist Alexandra Broeder on the inner world of children in intensive youth care.
These children are not listened to enough either, Brother discovered. And so five children dressed in immaculate white invite you to take a seat in their ritual space, on cushions around a totem pole of sheep-like proportions. Whispering in your ear, they ask you to explore the same depths and insecurities that children explore, and eventually descend with them into the world called Sheeptown, a woolly place where everything is cuddly and warm.
Destruction
Perhaps because as a childless person not used to having children right around me, especially in these half-and-half times, I found it to have more references to horror than something warm and safe, but that may be because I have seen too many films where innocent children turn out to do very scary things to adults who don't get their world. And regret it a lot.
Not entirely reassured you can then go to something called 'Pain Against Fear'. I did, especially since Naomi Velissariou has already stirred up so many tongues with the trilogy (and band) Permanent Destruction.
Wonderful final
Pain Against Fear is the finale of that trilogy, made for the club circuit, which has been on hiatus for a year and a half. Therefore, the first two parts cannot be played for now, no matter how many times they are demonstrated under #unmuteus. Pain Against Fear is adapted to the one-and-a-half metres, which means the unreal freezing of the audience at seats in front of a stage that exudes 'wild rave' in everything.
Trained as an actress, Velissario now performs what you would call a monologue in the theatre as a concert of a series of songs, which is now also available to listen to on spotify. At first still heavily distorted by 'Autotune', later more and more with her own sound, Velissariou takes you past anger at the world, anger at our solitary manners, about self-rage (if it even exists), about identity, about men, women, feminism, to an ending that in all its stillness was a splendid finale to these 17 days in Den Bosch.
An actor and a room, silently facing each other: empty and weary, but also full of the stories we might still have to tell each other.
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