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How can Applied Theatre in Health enhance acceptance within a community?

  • Aug 17, 2023
  • 8 min read

BA essay. Written 2019.


In the following essay I will be looking at how applied theatre can enhance acceptance within a community. Society is generally not very accepting of anyone who isn’t neurotypical. So, in this essay I will be looking at the following issues; lack of acceptance, personal safety and lack of support and identity for those who are atypical. I will also be looking at how we can possibly create a safer community for the vulnerable people in our society and how applied theatre shows like Not Fucking Sorry can start to open conversations around how we view people with mental health/learning disorders.  

 

The idea of community is immensely complex. It means something different to every person. Typically, a community is classified as a group of people who either have something in common, or all live in either the same area or same country. A community tends to protect its members, allow them to have their own identities and offers support to those within it. People within a community can want different things, have different interests and have very little in common and in most communities, this is accepted. Many people make up a community and allowing them to have their own voices is key to a community being a success. Sometimes we are put into a community because we share similar traits, other times we choose to be a part of a community. In order to make a community work you first need to “ […] Make sure that you understand the interest of the people who make up that community, in this way you will have a good chance of minimising, perhaps avoiding, the us versus them mentality” (Woul, D 2019).  But this doesn’t always happen. Often atypical people are forced into a community and are being silenced as a result. This can feel isolating at times as your identity can be taken away, and you can be reduced to just statistics. 

 

Unfortunately, atypical people face an increasing lack of funds, help and acceptance from the neurotypical members of society. Often someone must be at breaking point before they can receive help and are left to seek help and support from non-professionals. If a community is supposed to offer security for its members, why are those who are atypical often left feeling neglected by our society? The mental health crisis in the UK is only getting worse; our NHS is at breaking point with “one in four adults and one in 10 children experiencing mental illness” (NHS 2019) and looking to them for help. According to the Down Syndrome Association, “approximately 40,000 people in the UK currently live with Downs Syndrome” (2014). Depression and Anxiety are common too, with roughly “1 in 6 people reporting common mental health problems in any given week” (Mind.org 2013). Mental illness and learning difficulties are all around us, and we must start to find ways to help those who have diagnoses to be feel safe and accepted within society 

 

But even as society lets its atypical members down, applied theatre still has the ability to inspire change, motivate the neurotypical members of society towards a higher acceptance of people with mental health conditions and increase safety for everyone. Not Fucking Sorry spoke a lot about the isolation an atypical person receives from society. This show was created by atypical people and was designed to give them a safe way to educate the general public. The four actors all either had a mental health condition or learning difficulties and they both created and acted in the show. Not Fucking Sorry spoke a lot about how we treat and often assume negative things about atypical people and the actors continuously stressed that being supposedly different can’t define you and your abilities; that you are more than just your mental health/learning difficulty and that your identity as a human, is important and valid.  

 

Feeling like you’re losing your identity is a common daily struggle. Putting people into boxes that are easy to remember is simple; society does it without thinking, and the atypical people within society have to constantly fight to get their voices and stories told and portrayed in an accurate and human way. There are so many cliché portrayals of mental health/learning difficulties out there. The character Sam from Netflix’s Atypical has autism. Yet this show only ever portrays the successes Sam has. They show him in a normal school, with little to no help. He goes to work. Then goes to university and never faulters in his various goals. So “Sam in a sense is a kind of poster-child version of autism, perhaps occasionally rude (sometimes extremely rude) because he doesn’t know how to behave. But by the time we meet him in the story’s present tense, all his most challenging behaviour is in the past" (Felperin 2017). The show doesn’t show the freak outs, the real struggles or a true and accurate version of the day to day life of an autistic teenager.  

 

Then shows like The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night Time portray another variation of autism. It’s a highly stylised performance but again, only really shows Christopher's successes. The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night Time did show more versions of a supposed freak out and briefly looked at a few struggles but in the end, the story ends well with Christopher successfully navigating London with no help, getting a puppy, finding his mother and restarting a relationship with his father. Both Atypical and The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night Time give the impression that autistic people can do whatever they want without any draw backs happening. While some autistic people can do that, what happens to the portrayals of all the different struggles other autistic people face every day? Having the ideas that autistic people just don’t know how to socialise but can do everything else easily, can really affect the acceptance of those who don’t fit into the boxes portrayed in Atypical and The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night Time.  

 

As I previously mentioned, Not Fucking Sorry exists to give its atypical actors a chance to have their voices heard; and begin to expel the myths surrounding the idea that mental health/learning difficulties make you a lesser member of society. From the start of the show, it was very clear the actors were completely frustrated at the lack of understanding and the amount of isolation they received. They spoke very openly about how they were stigmatised as actors with downs syndrome or autism and not viewed as a person with dreams, worthy ideas and feelings. Not Fucking Sorry made it increasingly clear that cliché portrayals of atypical people in movies/TV shows tend to decrease acceptance and understanding from society and increase the stigma and fear from neurotypical members of society.  

 

During the show one of the actors rightfully pointed out that the neurotypical community's lack of acceptance made their lives dangerous and often made them afraid to go out in public alone. And they have a good point, if one of the key ideas of a community is to provide security and acceptance for those who are a part of it, why isn’t this happening in our society? Not Fucking Sorry spoke a lot about this.  They dedicated an entire section to people with mental health/learning difficulties who had lost their lives at the hands of members of society; there were around 100 – 200 people who had lost their lives earlier last year due to being beaten, robbed or bullied and this shocked and saddened everyone in the audience. One of the actors who had been diagnosed with autism spoke about how bullying is making not only her life, but the lives of other autistic people, difficult and stressful. With roughly 700,000 people in the UK currently living with autism, bullying is becoming an increasingly large problem for them. According to Autism.org, “34% of children on the autism spectrum say the worst thing about school is being picked on.” (2018).  

 

 There are many applied theatre practitioners out there whose sole aim is to begin the process of destigmatising and aiding access to proper help and treatments for both mental health and learning difficulties. Take, for example, Sinethemba Makanyas’ work as a drama therapist/traditional healer, where she seeks to help people in Africa to begin to have a better understanding of depression and what it is and how to treat it in a more effective way. There are also countless shows out there which discuss mental health. For example, Bobby Bakers show Mad Gyms and Kitchens openly discusses recovery from a serious mental breakdown. Bobby Baker both critiques and celebrates the advice she has been given in her recovery process throughout the show, in the hopes it will educate her audience around the day to day recovery someone with continued mental illness faces. She toured the show round small communities attempting to make them more inclusive as a result.  

 

Much like Not Fucking Sorry, Bobby Bakers’ and Sinethemba Makanyas’ works are openly questioning not only our idea of community and acceptance, but also our ideas of how identities of atypical people are perceived. YouTube has also started to become a platform where people with mental health conditions are able to get their voices and stories heard; as well as beginning to help educate the public around the lives of people with mental health conditions. These are just a few of the many ways applied theatre is being used to give people their identities back and reduce the effects of the cliché representations in the media. 

 

Not Fucking Sorry opened my eyes to the inequalities the atypical actors and facilitators face - and will likely continue to face unless something is done to change the way our society functions as a supposed community. If we continue to ignore the vulnerable people in society, we will never truly be a complete community. Change needs to happen to make our society a safe, inclusive and supportive environment for everyone. Not Fucking Sorry is a step in the right direction and the fact that people are starting to speak out about the inequalities atypical people face, shows that there is hope for improvement. Caoimhe McAvinchey quoted Bobby Baker in the book Applied Theatre; Performing Health and Wellbeing, saying that “mental illness is commonly seen as a deficit and a weakness; I want to show otherwise: that we have much to contribute and teach. That society has much to learn from us.” (2017: 222). This quote perfectly sums up what Not Fucking Sorry was trying to say.  

 

It’s a shame society seems unable to recognise the potential the atypical people within it offer to everyone else. Until society does, shows like Not Fucking Sorry and the advocates for mental health/learning difficulties will continue to fight to let everyone be heard, seen and accepted as true members of our society and create a more inclusive, safe and welcoming country for us all. 

 

 

 

Bibliography:  

About Downs Syndrome (2014) Available at https://www.downs-syndrome.org.uk/about/general/ (Accessed 04/12/2019)  

Autism Facts and History (2018) Available at https://www.autism.org.uk/about/what-is/myths-facts-stats.aspx (Accessed 04/12/2019)  

Baxter, V and Low, K (2017) Applied Theatre; Performing Health and Wellbeing. London UK: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.  

Felperin, L (2017) What Netflix comedy Atypical gets right and wrong about autism  

Mental Health (2019) Available at https://www.england.nhs.uk/mental-health/ (Accessed 19/11/2019) 

Woul, D (2019) Good Reads: Quote by Duop Chak Woul Available at https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/788235-if-you-are-a-leader-or-someone-who-works-for (Accessed 30/12/2019)  

 

Additional research that informed my work:  

Dissociative Identity Disorder – The Basics of DID (2018) Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohjHEGdnVA0&list=PLE9ZiMr2LbFAKpwjKLjmo3WBOQ-9JjtLB&index=14 (Accessed 09/12/2019)  

Having a baby with Down Syndrome (2016) Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQVKpQKg7-Q (Accessed 11/12/2019)  

Living With A Mental Disorder (2015) Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezI2W32yNg8 (Accessed 20/12/2019)  

My Past | my mental health journey (2019) Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yKXcXVzDtg (Accessed 10/12/2019) 

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