About the painful and confronting life stories of people with mental illnesses , who can be seen alongside professional actors, in a comforting performance filled with song and dance and silence.
Director Paul Röttger interviewed (former) psychiatric patients. Their life stories are told by the clients and actors of our company.
‘Who’s crazy now?’ played from January 2014 and was extended in 2015. In 2016 some private performances are still being played in collaboration with Parnassia on 10th and 24th of March and the 12th May. For more information and reservations please contact dominique@rcth.nl .
Paul Röttger, Director
“The distance between me and the person who is different, is very small”
“The city, as a metaphor for society, has increasingly become our partner. I have a great love for the man who has it worse than I do, who’s different. When I meet someone like that it touches my heart. I try to imagine how it is to be sick, to be old, to be lonely or have no parents. I exist by the grace of the other. The more I know that person, the better I can relativize my own life and the better I can appreciate life. “
“I work from my dreams. For several years I walked around with the thought that I want to do something with psychiatry. With theatre you have the possibility to have people experience new things in a cheerful yet confrontational way. We deliberately looked for people with a past in psychiatry who would be able to work with us professionally. Besides them actors of the rcth also selected in a way that you could think of them: “There might be something wrong with him or her, too.” Eventually I want to show that this can happen to all of us. For example, you receive a non-congenital brain damage and end up in a psychiatric circuit. That is very hard and harrowing. It makes me angry that people react so quickly and reject that which is different. I want to break through that wall.
The public must realize that in the blink of an eye, you too could lose it. Then you should know that there are people who understand you, lift you up and help you out. Then you obviously do not want tp encounter people who condemn you for being ‘crazy’. The other aim of this production is that I want to show that art, culture and creativity are good resources to solve problems and fears. Creativity helps you to develop. In this performance there’s almost every discipline you can think of. So I worked with a choreographer for a movement scene and a music theater performer to create live music from scratch every show again. I see that by working together it already brought a lot of new and positive experiences to our actors. I hope that the audience will experience this too. “
