"we're sitting in the molineux centre, shields road, byker, newcastle where the mental team hangs. a psychiatrist stares dead-ahead at their computer. (psychiatrists dont believe in eye-contact) this one reads a scanned letter, then starts talking to himself saying 'whoops yes i wondered when that was going to happen, i suppose i should have warned you about those side-effects'. those 'side-effects' were our first heart-attack."
(we've had another since, also caused by psychiatry, sick-chiatry). antipsychotic medication is killing a lot of us.
living in cruddas park, newcastle (yeah it gets rebranded riverside dene but we never saw the river from our tower-block) we're hit by a car chased by the police. lose everything, start over in a different tower-block way to the south - leeds - get held up at gunpoint. it probably won't surprise that 'services', cops, councils, insurance, dwp etc didn't help the 'victim' (not keen on those 'dear victim letters' or 'victims charters' either!). become homeless (again), sectioned (again), there's no care just enforced medication (antipsychotics) leading to slow heart attacks; get into a homeless hostel, get re-housed, more violence leading to lose that council flat and onto another hostel; council rehoused and finally off rolled by sick-chiatry once they decide we're too sick to be helped now they've done maximum damage. some of our hearts now dead, ta, sick-chiatry. other 'side-effects' include impotence, diabetes, colossal weight gain worsening osteoarthritis - not selling it are we? shouldnt those be called main effects alongside making profit for big pharma? don't take our word those sick psychiatry drugs hurt rather than help, dr joanna moncrieff for e.g. published research way back on how antipsychotic meds takes decades off folx lives.
came up thru political campaigning and community organising, learning how to use performance for creative resistance (ta, anti-apartheid), got involved in street & new circus when well, self-taught in all we do. only recently we've been supported, ta museum of homelessness (small radical campaigning organisation from lived experience), greyscale theatre, third angel, slung low, cpt ... graeae (britain's leading deaf & disabled led theatre company) looked after us under lockdown thru their beyond scheme, they've also helped us make this show. as well as graeae's beyond scheme, this shows also been supported by a level centre residency, mgc futures bursary and slung low seedfund. alex kelly of third angel is our mentor and creative collaborator.
heartfelt is our solo show about hearts and heartlessness. it's a relaxed performance. do come and join the serious-fun as we reduce sick-chiatry to firewood, stop a politician's heart, play a game of competitive empathy, explore zoochosis (animals also go crazy while imprisoned, humans then medicate them with the meds that are killing us rather than setting them free) - but octopus and others are working on their revenge. all this is woven together alongside our own experiences of heart-attacks under the fhs (fragmentary health service) to create a compelling exploration of hearts & heartlessness. so love and rage with us, get free sweets and a bubblewrap heart to pop. heartfelt is a wildly inventive disability-led solo theatre show and the third show in a trilogy spiralling out of some of our lived experiences of homelessness - the very first part of which was first shared / supported by cpt and their class festival before the pandemonium.
Tue 22 Nov - Wed 23 Nov at 7.15pm
