Have a Goodnight Walter review | The Butterfly Club

In Have a Goodnight Walter, Dean and Mary are a married couple living with Dean’s Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Checking that doors are locked, windows are shut, and monitoring the motion detector camera at the front gate are all common occurrences. One evening, an unlocked door threatens Dean’s fragile OCD management, as his intrusive thoughts begin to manifest through the people around him.
 
The 45-minute show immediately drops the audience into Dean’s headspace, with no preamble. We are told early on that Dean has OCD, but are offered no context for his extreme behaviour or mental state, which leaves us scrambling to make sense of why he is spiralling. Personally, I’ve never seen OCD portrayed in such a psychologically heightened way, involving feverish hallucinations. A better-defined introduction to Dean’s internal world would have helped ground the audience, making certain scenes more meaningful, such as why the police conduct a welfare check prompted by his OCD.

Chemistry review

Chemistry is a play about the chemistry between two young people who fall in love. But more importantly, it is about the chemistry between two young people who fall in love who have a chemical imbalance in their brains. Jacob Marx Rice’s Chemistry was the first in his trilogy of what the playwright refers to as his “Suicide Comedies” - preceding Coping and Cracks - that looked at mental illness through a raw yet comedic lens. 

On the surface, Steph and Jamie (Monique Fisher and Thomas Filer) could not be more different. She works in a pub with a signature look of an oversized Janis Joplin t-shirt, black stockings and Doc Martens. He works for the government, and wears fitted suits and ties, with pens in his jacket pocket and hair kept perfectly in place. However, they are linked by their mental illnesses and a chance encounter at a psychiatrist's office has the two entering into a passionate relationship. While Steph has been living with chronic depression for most of her life and is quite the expert on various medications and treatments, Jamie has only recently been diagnosed with unipolar mania after an incident in which he did not sleep for days, ended up with him tearing off sections of his skin.

Birdcage Thursdays review | fortyfivedownstairs

A shelf filled with books or a wardrobe brimming with various shoes can bring lots of solace and comfort to people. Collecting things can often be a reminder of adventures and events in your life. However, this need to keep things can sometimes be a manifestation of fear and anxiety. Sandra Fiona Long's Birdcage Thursdays focuses on Helene, an aging mother whose need to hold on to everything and unable to throw things out has gotten so out of control she is now facing being evicted from her home. It's up to her daughter and a case manager to attempt to reason with her in culling possessions they perceive to be junk but to Helene are protecting her from her loneliness.

Genevieve Picot as Helene finds a good balance of determination and fear, particularly when it comes to avoiding her case manager, Kiera, who intends to help Helene learn how to let go of everything she's been holding on to. Her daughter Catherine, played by Sophia Constantine, displays the frustration at trying to help someone who doesn't realise they have a problem however there are times where she comes off as more aloof than caring and the relationship between mother and daughter does not feel as it has been fully fleshed out and established.

Convergent Pathologies | Midsumma Fetsival interview

One of the more intriguing exhibitions being presented at Midsumma Festival is Premier Event, Convergent Pathologies. Curated by myriad collective's darcy t gunk, the work on display by trans and gender diverse (TGD) artists living with mental illness, is a representation of their experiences of making choices to resist or comply with being pathologised.

As co-founder of myriad collective - a group that seeks to create performance, exhibition and professional development opportunities for TGD artists in Melbourne - finding the talent for this exhibition was not an arduous one for darcy. "Almost all of the artists in this exhibition have worked with myriad collective before, which meant that they understood how we do things, and our ethics and values as a collective. We did an open call for submissions and the response we got was that they were really excited to be part of this exhibition. myriad collective is all about bringing together a broad diversity of trans and gender diverse experience, so I wanted to fit as many artists into the exhibition as possible, whilst still allowing them to present up to 3 works each," darcy says.

People Piss In Here review - Melbourne Fringe

Jo is suffering from a mental illnesses find herself unable to leave the bathroom at work. Is she having a heart attack or a panic-attack? She's not quite sure. Her friend, Sam, also suffering from a mental illness, goes in to help her. Performed as part of the 2015 Melbourne Fringe Festival, Isobel Marmion's People Piss In Here is an absurdist take at living with mental illness.

The exploration of mental illness is explored honestly and sensitively but also humorously through the characters as they react and respond to the effects of their conditions. The fears and uncertainties expressed in Marmions' script (written in consultation with individuals diagnosed with mental illnesses) about living a fulfilled life while battling these, is subtle and reflective.