EVEN IF you do not know anyone who needs psychiatric care, it is easy to become angry about the investigation that showed 94 psychiatric patients died of neglect in Gauteng last year. It is a big number. People died because of bad decision-making and not because of their actual illness.
The internet memes such a huge loss inspired can be tweeted online and righteous ire can be shared.
It is a whole lot more difficult to empathise with someone who is going through some sort of psychiatric break though. Their behaviour makes no sense, they don’t want to listen to you, they are not your problem. If only there was some way you could understand what they are going through, maybe you would have a bit more sympathy.
Watching Sean Baumann’s cantata Madness Songs of Hope & Despair could be just that insight you need. The cantata draws you in with its beautiful sound and then gives you an unnerving glimpse into the state of mind of someone undergoing a schizophrenic break.
While the performance follows the precepts of a cantata – a lyric drama set to music which is not acted – there is nothing fuddy duddy about it. The music incorporates jazzy sounds, some drumming, something that sounded like plainchant and even the start of a sangoma’s chant and the visuals keep your eyes engaged.
Though Baumann has made up the characters, he has incorporated into the libretto the actual words and phrases spoken by patients he has treated as a psychiatrist at Valkenberg Hospital’s acute wards.
The narrative, coupled with music by Galina Uritz and Dizu Plaatjies and video projections by Koeka Stander (which incorporates Fiona Moodie’s art) makes for a disturbing and evocative experience.
Seven musicians are seated at the front of the stage and conductor Chad Hendricks takes centre stage with little fanfare. The music is a mixture of some pre-recorded instruments and that from the accomplished live musicians – at times discordant and then slipping into perfect concordance, the musical accompaniment sets an unsettled tone.
The storyline is provided by the singing from nine singers who are behind the gauze video screen. Precision lighting highlights the cast either as a group or singly as they tackle different roles like the authoritative doctor (Ebenezer Sawuli), the concerned mother (Fikile Mthetwa) or the confused patient Themba (Monwabisi Lindi).
Starting off with a few deceptively simple sketches which tell us much about Themba’s childhood in the Eastern Cape and subsequent move to Cape Town to study architecture, the performance draws us into his growing sense of bewilderment as he becomes caught up in the maze of his mind and the structures of his world change.
Lindi articulates Themba’s confusion and hopelessness while the rest of the cast try to draw him out and calm him down. Themba’s breakdown is not expressed verbally but through disjointed and vaguely menacing images on-screen and the audience’s struggle to make sense of what you see is just the right touch of frightening to discomfort.
Which is worse, comes the question, to be deemed possessed, bewitched, or ill? No matter your take on that uneasy possibility, our contemporary healthcare system has introduced an even bigger concern, the prospect of not being taken care of, should you be faced with that question.
MADNESS SONGS OF HOPE & DESPAIR
DIRECTOR: Lara Foot
CONDUCTOR: Chad Hendricks
CAST: Monwabisi Lindi, Fikile Mthetwa, Nolubabalo Babalwa Mdayi, Ebenezer Sawuli, Lungile Halam, Palesa Portia Malieloa, Siphesihle Mdena, Linda Nteleza, Vuyisa Jack, Lungile Halam
VENUE: Baxter Theatre
UNTIL: February 19
RUNNING TIME: 75 minutes, no interval
PICTURE: Andrew Brown
Theresa the WordSmith 