In her autobiographical solo performance Crazy: One Woman’s Search for Sanity, actress Gail Marlene Schwartz has succeeded in creating out of a lifelong struggle with mental illness an improbably entertaining piece of theatre.
Gail Marlene Schwartz is shown in a scene from her one-woman play Crazy.
Fast-paced, often funny, Schwartz’s play tells her story largely through many of the 18 therapists she has seen since the age of five. Her parents sent her to the first in the hope that he could teach her how to “be a good girl and express her feelings appropriately.”
Schwartz is able to imitate, with hilarious effect, the varying tones of voice and mannerisms of the men and women who over the years have tried to “cure” her. Their approaches and theories have varied widely from early trauma, chemical imbalance and genetics to improper breathing, spiritual yearning and even that medicalization of women’s emotions is a form of social control.
Schwartz, an American now living in Montreal, is frank about her troubled relationship with her mother, her family’s quirks, her difficulties maintaining adult relationships and keeping a job, her fears and obsessive-compulsiveness and, at her lowest point, suicidal thoughts.
Schwartz’s goal is to lift the stigma that still surrounds mental illness – a term she is a little uneasy with – and to get people talking about it openly. But Crazy can be enjoyed even if the topic has no personal resonance.
Schwartz has a fresh quality that keeps the audience riveted through the performance, which lasts approximately 50 minutes, the length of a typical therapy session.
Crazy was previewed recently to a select audience, many from the health, community service and educational fields, in a small second-storey dance studio on St. Laurent Boulevard. A public performance, the play’s Montreal debut, will be presented at a larger venue Oct. 11, to mark World Mental Health Day.
Schwartz, the founder and artistic director of Third Story Window, which produces theatre and video exploring socially relevant issues, is also offering the play to interested community groups. The show may be followed by a panel discussion or lead into a creative-arts workshop.
“This is art, but it is socially engaged art,” Schwartz says. “Putting my story out there has consistently opened doors for deeper audience engagement with the topic, and that is wonderfully rewarding.”
Crazy premièred at the New York International Fringe Festival two years ago, and has since toured colleges in New England. Schwartz grew up in upstate New York, graduated from Tufts University 20 years ago, and went back to Goddard College in Vermont for a master of fine arts a few years ago. She’s been living in Montreal for just over a year.
She began working on Crazy while at graduate school when she was on the verge of dropping out because of an especially crippling period of depression and anxiety.
The focus of the spare set of Crazy is a clothesline and a large writing pad on an easel. Schwartz, a tall woman, comes on stage riding a small children’s bicycle. The significance of that bike will slowly be revealed.
The white garments and sheets that are pegged onto the line serve as a screen to project videos of quotes from different people about mental illness, photos of Schwartz during an acute attack, and finally, a little girl trying to learn how to ride her bike.
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In one episode, blotches meant to represent Rorschach tests are flashed on the laundry. Schwartz shows her flair for improvisation when she asks the audience what the blotches look like.
The clothesline and easel are also props that let Schwartz express her compulsions for orderliness and keeping lists.
There is also music, and Schwartz sings and dances a little.
When the curtain falls, it is by no means clear whether the protagonist has found sanity, or, if in fact, that is what she is really looking for. Schwartz leaves the audience thinking about what “craziness” really is.
Crazy refers to Schwartz’s Jewish background. She speaks of her great-grandparents escape from the pogroms in Russia and her perplexity over the dire tone of the Jewish texts she read at temple.
She recalls the hints of the questionable mental health of relatives: the parental fights, the domineering, moody mother, an aunt that washes her hands too often, uncles that didn’t speak to one another for 25 years even though they ran a business together.
“Crazy has lots of Jewish imagery and references, and when I was creating it, that felt very important for me to include,” she writes in her blog. “Several audience members have commented to me, one on one, that they saw their story through mine and all but one were Jewish.”
Schwartz is curious to hear other people’s insights into why Jews seem to be prone to mental health issues.
“I’m sure the historical oppression and lack of homeland is a piece of it, though [I’m] not sure exactly how it’s connected,” she writes. “And, certainly, the focus on education and analysis of the Torah could easily lead to, in modern western life, a similar education and analysis of personal growth and relationships.”
For more information, call Third Story Window at 389-4231.