This is a past event
The archival remnants of British psychiatric institutions are replete with references to the use of the dramatic arts as a form of recreation, amusement, and cure.
Yet, despite the apparent ubiquity of dramatic performance across a whole miscellany of archival material, and a general acknowledgement of a connection between madness, theatre and performance within scholarship more broadly, the role and significance of the histrionic arts as a form of therapy within psychiatric institutions has received only cursory attention.
Responding to Juliet Foster’s call for scholars to dig deeper into the largely unwritten history of theatrical performances in psychiatric contexts, this paper explores the rationale behind, implementation and experience of the dramatic arts in the British insane asylum.
[1] Drawing upon the writings of medical superintendents, the literary miscellanies of patient-produced magazines and an eclectic mix of cultural ephemera, including theatrical playbills and press cuttings, it seeks to develop extant histories of asylum performances to consider the expressive, and potentially subversive, possibilities the stage might have offered patients themselves.
In doing so, it endeavours to question and complicate the existing literature’s emphasis on the disciplinary function of theatrical performances in the asylum context by drawing attention to the polysemic nature of the dramatic arts as a complex feature of asylum therapeutics and culture.
[1] Juliet Foster, ‘Performance in Bethlem, Fulbourn and Brookwood Hospitals: A Social Psychological and Social Historical Examination’ Harpin and Foster, Performance, Madness and Psychiatry, p. 59.
- Speaker
- Jessica Campbell (University of Edinburgh)
- Venue
- via Teams