Battling the stigma of mental illness on stage

Vishnu had been trying to interrupt the game the boys were playing and the boys had thrown his left shoe out the first-floor classroom window in response before proceeding to mock his disability. The rest of his classmates stood mute spectators to the event. 

Most of you may not know Vishnu, but many of you would have witnessed some such form of abuse meted out to the mentally ill, or at least used the words kirukku, psycho and paithiyam to insult your friends. While the latter might seem trivial, it is just one of the indicators that point to the stigma associated with mental illnesses. “Most reports claim that at least one in three people suffer from some sort of mental disorder. 

Imagine how much better the world would have been if, the other two would come out to offer help and support to the affected. But this is not the case because people are not educated enough about these issues,” explains Kathik A, the writer and director of the musical, Kirukku Nagaram Express, a satirical musical play that deals with the stigma of mental illnesses. 

Kirukku Nagaram Express is a train that transports you to a city full of schizophrenics, psychopaths, manic- depressives and people with other mental disorders and puts you face to face with the lives of these stigmatised and stereotyped people. 

“The play narrates how someone boards a train to Kirukku Nagaram (City of lunatics) despite being warned against it, and discovers different types of mental illnesses, the stigmas and stereotypes people with mental disorders deal with every day and about support systems and coping mechanisms that can be provided to them,” adds Karthik. The idea for the play came to him from a personal dilemma. 

“I was going through a lot of stress in my work life and wanted to take a break. But you cannot go to your boss and say ‘I’m stressed. I want to take a day off.’ You are immediately asked to ‘toughen up’ and to ‘deal with it.’ 

However, when you tell them you have a fever or any other physical illness, this is not a problem. The way we treat and understand psychological well-being is misconstrued. This was what prompted the idea of the play. 

Later, I talked to therapists and did some research online to construct a detailed concept instead of a script and then left the nuances of the story to the interpretation of actors so that they could borrow from their own personal experiences. 

The play will have three plot-lines, each dealing with different sets of disorders — like schizophrenia and postpartum depression. Most of the incidents are based on experiences either I or one of the four actors have faced in real life. 

Since all five of us have a musical background, we felt it would be more apt to device the play as a musical,” explains Karthik. 

Karthik and Crea Shakthi, who will be staging the play for the first time at the end of this month, are also in talks with different mental health organisations across the city, to stage the play for the mentally disabled.