‘You Were an O. Your Black O in the Middle of Your Face’: Madness and Catastrophe in Katie Mitchell’s Ophelias Zimmer and Anatomy of a Suicide

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Notes

1. Alice Birch, I, Ophelias Zimmer, Royal Court Theatre, May 20, 2016, V&A Recording, Ref: 16/07/A2/9000 (accessed June 14, 2018).

2. Christopher Innes and Maria Shevtsova, The Cambridge Companion to Theatre Directing (Cambridge University Press, 2013), 211.

3. Lyn Gardner, The Guardian, May 18, 2016.

4. Emma Cole, ‘The Method Behind the Madness: Katie Mitchell, Stanislavski, and The Classics’, Classical Receptions 7, no. 3 (2015): 400–21 (404).

5. Rosemary Malague, ‘Theatrical Realism as Feminist Intervention: Katie Mitchell’s 2011 Staging of A Woman Killed With Kindness’, Shakespeare Bulletin 31, no. 4 (2013): 623–45 (625), emphasis by the author.

6. Dan Rebellato, ‘Katie Mitchell: Learning From Europe’, in Contemporary European Theatre Directors, ed. Maria Delgado and Dan Rebellato (London: Routledge, 2010), 317–38 (320), emphasis by the author.

7. Mitchell, in Shevtsova, ‘On Directing: A Conversation with Katie Mitchell’, 8, emphasis by the author.

8. Michael Moon in Michael Moon and Eve Kosofsky-Sedgwick, ‘Divinity: A Dossier, A Performance Piece, A Little-Understood Emotion’, in Bodies Out of Bounds: Fatness and Transgression, ed. Jana Evans and Kathleen Le Besco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 292–328 (305–6), emphasis in the original.

9. Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 57, emphasis in the original.

10. Mitchell, quoted in Maria Shevtsova, ‘On Directing: A Conversation with Katie Mitchell’, New Theatre Quarterly 22, no. 1 (February, 2006): 3–18 (16).

11. It would be accurate to say that the men’s bodies are also subject to the close ups in the intermedial work but my suggestion is that the meaning of such framing is necessarily different for women’s bodies owing to their historical position as the framed and observed sex.

12. See Joanna Bourke, The Story of Pain: From Prayers to Painkillers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).

13. I am not suggesting here that the quotation in relation to Iphigenia is evidence that Mitchell only engages with these six emotions; rather I am pointing to the general quality of finitude that is at play in her writings about her process.

14. Katie Mitchell, ‘Interview with Siobhan Davies’, https://www.siobhandavies.com/conversations/mitchell/transcript.php (accessed December 10, 2019), emphasis by the author.

15. See Anna Harpin, Madness, Art, and Society: Beyond Illness (London: Routledge, 2018).

16. David Healy, Mania: A Short History of Bi-Polar Disorder (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 243.

17. Joanna Moncrieff, The Myth of the Chemical Cure: A Critique of Psychiatric Drug Treatment (London: Palgrave, 2009), 23.

18. James Davies, ‘Introduction’, in The Sedated Society: The Causes and Harms of Our Psychiatric Drug Epidemic, ed. James Davies (London: Palgrave, 2017), 5–6.

19. Moncrieff, The Myth of the Chemical Cure, 9.

20. Davies, ‘Introduction’, 1.

21. Both the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and the National Health Service (NHS) have recently had to revise their advice to patients about antidepressant withdrawal to acknowledge that ‘Withdrawal symptoms usually come on after 5 days and generally last for up to 6 weeks. Some people have severe withdrawal symptoms that last for several months or more’. This is a significant shift in position which originally said that withdrawal was ‘mild and usually lasted less than a week’. Likewise, the Royal College of Psychiatrists issued a Position Statement in May 2019 in response to the growing evidence that challenges the efficacy of antidepressants (especially in mild depression) and identifies the serious risks of withdrawal that were previously minimised. See National Institute for Health and Excellence, ‘Depression Overview’, Interactive Flow Chart, n.d. https://pathways.nice.org.uk/pathways/depression (accessed November 28, 2019); National Health Service, ‘How should you come off antidepressants?’ Website, November 6, 2019, https://www.nhs.uk/common-health-questions/medicines/how-should-antidepressants-be-discontinued/ (accessed November 28, 2019); and Royal College of Physicians, ‘Position statement on antidepressants and depression’, May 2019, https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/docs/default-source/improving-care/better-mh-policy/position-statements/ps04_19—antidepressants-and-depression.pdf?sfvrsn=ddea9473_5 (accessed November 28, 2019).

22. Birch, II, Ophelias Zimmer V&A Recording.

23. For a full account of this argument please see Anna Harpin, Madness, Art, and Society: Beyond Illness (London: Routledge, 2018).

24. Ritz DeRidder, Andrew Molodynski, Catherine Manning, Pearce McCusker, Jorun Rugkåsa, ‘Community treatment orders in the UK 5 years on: a repeat national survey of psychiatrists’, British Journal of Psychiatry 40, no. 3 (June, 2016): 119–23 (119).

25. Anonymous, quoted in Christina Katsakou et al, ‘Psychiatric Patients Views on Why Their Involuntary Hospitalisation Was Right of Wrong: A Qualitative Study’, Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology 47, no. 427 (2011): 1169–79 (1174).

26. Maddy Costa, Margaret Perry, Evangeline Cullingworth, Becky Jones, Jonathan Wakeham, and Jessie Thompson, ‘Death and the Abject Maiden: Six Writers Discuss the Staging of Suicide in Ophelias Zimmer, The Forbidden Zone and Anatomy of a Suicide’, backpages of this issue, 286–90 (288).

27. Royal Court Theatre, ‘Katie Mitchell and Chloe Lamford discuss Ophelias Zimmer’, YouTube-Video, May 5, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGUTiCr3Snk, (accessed August 6, 2018), 00:01:31.

28. From The Box Office, ‘Anatomy of a Suicide – Writer Alice Birch & Director Katie Mitchell’, YouTube-Video, April 24, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qEUIHyXtUM (accessed August 6, 2018), 00:02:14.

29. For further discussion please see Royal Court Playwright’s Podcast, ‘S2 Ep1: Alice Birch talks to Simon Stephens’, Podcast, November 17, 2017 https://royalcourttheatre.com/podcast/s2-ep1-alice-birch-talks-simon-stephens/(accessed August 6, 2018).

30. From The Box Office, ‘Anatomy of a Suicide – Writer Alice Birch & Director Katie Mitchell’, 00:01:20.

31. Birch, II, Ophelias Zimmer V&A Recording.

32. Catherine Love, ‘Ophelias Zimmer, Royal Court – Review’, Blog, May 20, 2016, https://catherinelove.co.uk/2016/05/20/ophelias-zimmer-royal-court/ (accessed August 6, 2018).

33. Aleks Sierz, ’Ophelias Zimmer, Royal Court – Review’, Blog, May 21, 2016, http://www.sierz.co.uk/reviews/ophelias-zimmer-royal-court/ (accessed August 6, 2018).

34. Lyn Gardner, ‘Ophelias Zimmer Review – Katie Mitchell brings Hamlet’s real ghost into focus’, The Guardian, May 19, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/may/18/ophelias-zimmer-review-katie-mitchell-hamlet-royal-court (accessed August 6, 2018).

35. Dominic Cavendish, ‘A Brave, Intricate and Cathartic play – Anatomy of a Suicide, Royal Court Downstairs, Review’, The Telegraph, June 12, 2017, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/theatre/what-to-see/brave-play-anatomy-suicide-royal-court-downstairs-review/ (accessed August 6, 2018).

36. Natasha Tripney, ‘Anatomy of a Suicide Review at Royal Court, London – “full of pain and strange beauty”’, The Stage, June 11, 2017, https://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/2017/anatomy-suicide-review-royal-court-london/ (accessed August 6, 2018).

37. Paul Taylor, ‘Anatomy of a Suicide, Royal Court, London, Review: Unflinching and Extraordinarily Intense’, The Independent, June 12, 2017, https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/anatomy-of-a-suicide-review-royal-court-london-a7785701.html (accessed August 6, 2018).

38. Matt Trueman, ‘London Theater Review: Anatomy of a Suicide’, Variety, June 13, 2017, https://variety.com/2017/legit/reviews/anatomy-of-a-suicide-review-royal-court-1202464426/ (accessed August 6, 2018).

39. The play is staged with the three women playing side by side but scenographically framed in separate times and spaces. As the play progresses Carol leaves the stage after her suicide. She is later followed by Anna following hers. Finally, the whole stage space is left to the remaining woman, Bonnie.

40. There are numerous studies about the overrepresentation of people of colour in mental health services. These vary in emphasis from arguing for genetic predisposition to those arguing for social causes to others pointing to the racial biases in systems of diagnosis and treatment. See for example, Rebecca Pinto, Mark Ashworth, Roger Jones, ‘Schizophrenia in black Caribbeans living in the UK: an exploration of underlying causes of the high incidence rate’, British Journal of General Practice 55, no. 551 (June, 2008): 429–34; Frank Keating, ‘African and Caribbean Men and Mental Health. A Race Equality Foundation Briefing Paper’, Race Equality Foundation, Health Briefing Nr. 5, May, 2007, https://raceequalityfoundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/health-brief5.pdf (accessed November 28, 2019); and Phoebe Barnett, et al., ‘Ethnic variations in compulsory detention under the Mental Health Act: a systematic review and meta-analysis of international data’, The Lancet 6, no. 4 (March, 2019): 305–17.

41. Benjamin Fowler, ‘Introduction’ to The Theatre of Katie Mitchell, 1.

42. Maddy Costa et al., ‘Death and the Abject Maiden: Six Writers Discuss the Staging of Suicide’, backpages of this issue, 286–90 (290).

43. See, for example, Jill Dolan, The Feminist Spectator as Critic (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988). Kim Solga, on the other hand, makes the case for what she calls Mitchell’s ‘radical naturalism’ in Kim Solga, ‘Body Doubles, Babel’s Voices: Katie Mitchell’s Iphigenia at Aulis and the Theatre of Sacrifice’, Contemporary Theatre Review 18, no. 2 (2008): 146–60.

44. Malague, ‘Theatrical Realism as Feminist Intervention’, 624.

45. Mitchell, qtd in Katie Normington, ‘Little Acts of Faith: Katie Mitchell’s The Mysteries’, New Theatre Quarterly 14, no. 54 (1998): 99–110 (105).

46. Birch, Anatomy, 237.

47. Birch, II, Ophelias Zimmer V&A Recording.

48. Susannah Clapp, ‘Anatomy of a Suicide Review – unhappy days are here again’, The Observer, June 18, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/jun/18/anatomy-of-a-suicide-observer-review (accessed on August 6, 2018).

49. Birch, Anatomy of a Suicide (London: Oberon, 2017), 233.

50. Birch, Anatomy, 234.

51. Maddy Costa, Margaret Perry, Evangeline Cullingworth, Becky Jones, Jonathan Wakeham, and Jessie Thompson, ‘Death and the Abject Maiden: Six Writers Discuss the Staging of Suicide in Ophelias Zimmer, The Forbidden Zone and Anatomy of a Suicide’, backpages of this issue, 286–90 (287).

52. Birch, IV, Ophelias Zimmer V&A Recording.

53. Bridget Escolme, ‘Ophelia Confined: Madness and Infantilism in Some Version of Hamlet’, in Performance, Madness, and Psychiatry: Isolated Acts, ed. Anna Harpin and Juliet Foster (London: Palgrave, 2014), 165–86 (166).

54. Rapley, Moncrieff, and Dillon, De-Medicalising Misery: Psychiatry, Psychology, and the Human Condition (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011), 1–2, emphasis in the original.

55. For a detailed and rigorous debate on this topic please listen to: Renegade Ape, ‘Antidepressants: A Debate’ Podcast, Episode 58, June 28, 2018 https://renegadeape.com/archive/ (accessed August 13, 2018).

56. Rebellato, ‘Katie Mitchell’, 323.

57. Katie Mitchell, ‘Acting Out’, The Guardian, September 25, 2004.

58. For a persuasive critique of such universalising thinking please see Ethan Watters, Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the Western Mind (London: Robinson, 2011).

59. Simon Stephens, A Working Diary (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 200.

60. Stephens, A Working Diary, 246–7.

61. Stephens is quoted in Charlotte Higgins, ‘Katie Mitchell: British Theatre’s Queen in Exile’, The Guardian, January 14, 2016.

62. Darian Leader, The New Black: Mourning, Melancholia, and Depression (London: Penguin, 2009), 14.

63. Darian Leader, What is Madness? (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2011), 9.

64. I am here drawing on Leader in What is Madness? and his discussions about the invisibility of quiet madness in cultural scripts of despair.