Galskap - en syk komedie* (Madness - a sick comedy)

Galskap - en syk komedie* (Madness - a sick comedy) was documentary and what the audience was presented for came from real life. The stories told were based in personal experiences with growing up with a mentally ill father.

Today’s society no longer uses the term madness about mental illness, but prefers to call it anxiety, schizophrenia, depression or bipolar disorder. Being educated people we have learned to use these terms in daily speech, but this doesn’t necessarily provide us with insight in how it feels to live with these diagnoses.

Does our knowledge of diagnoses make it any easier for us to talk about our own mental health? How should we relate to mental illness, and how can a child experience a parent being diagnosed?

Galskap - en syk komedie presented strategies to cope with mental illness, here and now, onstage, in real time. Flaatenbjørk kompani thinks the awareness of mental illnesses can lead to the trap of pitying people, and to fearing that "I" am like "them". In reality mental illnesses are part of life and nothing but normal. The diagnoses may be good tools for the health care section but maybe not as useful in the human conversation. Can an unnuanced approach to diagnoses contribute to narrow the conversation about mental illnesses too much?

Galskap - en syk komedie by Flaatenbjørk kompani was made possible due to support by Arts Council Norway and spenn.no.

Source:

Dramatikkens hus, dramatikkenshus.no, 30.08.2010, http://www.dramatikkenshus.no/pub/dramatikkenshus/Innhold/kalenderarkiv/?aid=1071&cid=1045&viewall=1#dramatikkenshus

*Not yet translated into English. The title within parentheses is the Norwegian title's literal meaning.