Gemma: Out of Character are open about their status as people who use or have used mental health services. We take a yearly questionnaire about our aims for the next 12 months which includes the question, ‘how often should we make work about mental health?’ since forming in December 2008 we have consistently and unanimously always answered ‘sometimes’ to this.

We don’t want to deny or ‘play upon’ the status, we recognise a need to state it as part of our identity, without making it the only thing we’re about.

Our company statement was written after long discussion and consideration of each individuals take on how we represent ourselves, we hope it reflects this:

Out of Character: The fine line between madness and genius

We make challenging work for inquisitive audiences with the aim of transcending the boundaries of modern theatre and your perceptions of mental health, claiming the territory between inspiration and medication.

We make work both about mental health and non-mental health issues; an irony of our situation is perhaps that it is easier to get funding and paid work when we make work directly about mental health, even though the company may want to escape this label. In some respects talking about MH in theatre allows us the space and finance to make the work we’d rather be making.

From a community facilitator or perhaps director’s perspective it took us getting on for two years of working together before we ‘felt’ ready to make work about these issues, we made ‘Episodes’ in 2010. This was our first mental health show and meant that the process often involved bringing material to the workshops that was potentially emotional. As director I am always careful and clear about setting boundaries with autobiographical material, although no matter how careful we try to be there is always some seepage and spillage of the past into the present. We have to be strong and robust as a company to support each other in this, we also needed to spend time building trust and developing our own working language... so we throw around the words crazy and nutter. We trust each other to have ‘reclaimed’ this language and own and feel safe in our identities without fear of recrimination and stigma. That’s really important and something which I think lets us play and push material in process and performance to create something quite unique; that the experiences are already owned and dealt with in some respects gives us more artistic licence, much of the work in Episodes now needs careful tracking to remember who’s story it was originally after collaborative processes shaped and changed it.

Brian: We have various ways of portraying symptoms of mental illness along with misunderstandings between medical staff and consultants with the patient. We also like to portray what is normal and right with our lives and try not label ourselves with a certain diagnoses as we are all so much more than that. We act out snippets of key situations we were involved with in the past. We do this alone or with more than one person any one time. Usually it is alone.

Gemma: I think I’ve answered this above – in terms of stigma. Everyone has mental health, and so in some respects everything is about mental health. There is a long history of representation of mental health in theatre (and film/literature etc) in terms of madness... this is perhaps a slightly separate research area that I am sure you can look into in more detail if you’re interested.

Brian: I think that theatre makes people think about and reflect on their own attitudes towards people with a mental illness. It shows people the terrible suffering that people can go through in a safe environment. We also try and have a sense of humour.

Gemma: We offer placements to York St John University students, we find this breaks down barriers and encourages communication between the two groups using the shared ground of theatre, which promotes an equality in the exchange, rather than perhaps just an ‘us and them’ dialogue.

Our specific mental health work is generally received by audiences comprising of students studying on health related programmes and health professionals; we hope offering our experiences to these audiences gives a voice and humanity to people who they may hold preconceived ideas about, yet will be working with in the future. It’s also a chance to articulate the good and bad things about mental health services to people who already work in the field... perhaps without them being able to discount opinions as we aren’t in a ward setting, but a theatre one where we hold the power.

Feedback from people who have similar experiences seems to suggest that watching our work is a validating experience and one in which they can often identify with the themes raised.

Gemma: See these two statements available online http://convergeyork.co.uk/our- graduates/converge-students/ They are anonymous statements which are both from people who are also founder members of out of character and perhaps describe the experience better from this personal perspective.

From my perspective, I believe theatre and creative arts more generally are vital to the well-being of everyone. In my personal experience it is the language of performance, involving the body and mind, the game of creating and taking risks which offers a space like no other. Making theatre is essentially learning to play a very unique and particular game together and in doing this we can find out new things about ourselves, explore facets of our identities and each others’, which we wouldn’t be able to do in other situations. We learn to negotiate, without necessarily speaking, we get things wrong only to discover they were right, we occupy a liminal space in which anything is possible; this is both scary and liberating and, I believe, absolutely vital for positive mental health and positive societies of people.

As an aside I would question the use of the word ‘suffer’ here. Language is a powerful tool, not everyone with a mental health problem would describe their experiences as always being one of ‘suffering’.

Brian: I find being an actor with a mental illness challenging. At the same time it gives a certain amount of meaning to my life and an opportunity to make some new friends and meet people unconnected with mental health. It has increased my confidence. When someone asks ever what I do I can now say I am a part -time actor. Acting is a great source of fun which I cannot get anywhere else in my life.