Friday night I sat in a room with 760 strangers and cried.
We had just seen the Broadway play Next to Normal. Making a musical about a woman’s 16-year struggle with bi-polar disorder and depression might seem strange, but I can’t imagine this powerful story without music. The music both intensified and distanced this family’s pain—drawing me into their story but also allowing me time to process the turmoil of this story.
A key theme that struck me was each person’s desire to hide pain and seek out numbness. Initially Diane manages her illness with many, many, many medications, but she despises the colorless life (blacks, whites, and grays) that results. Her song “I Miss the Mountains” nearly convinced me that going off her meds was a good thing. It wasn’t until later that I realized she relied on her manic episodes to dull, or at least drown out, her pain. In response to her plunging lows and highs, her family seeks numbness of their own through avoidance and drugs.
Mental illness has become a prominent, and yet still hidden part of the human condition (remember this focus of the humanities, and its three elements—cultural, social, and personal?). In this play, normal is exposed as a cultural construct, not an archetype. After all, what are the normal times to grieve, normal responses to stress, normal marriages, normal children? This play forces the characters to break away from this cultural definition and reject the myth of normal life in order to realize that next to normal might just be good enough.
It would take a better writer than me to write about music in such a way that you can hear it for yourself. Here are some of the songs that impacted me most throughout the play:
"I'm Alive" is a song by the brother Gabe. Although he died as a baby, he haunts his mother's depression and her fear that by curing her depression she will lose the only connection she has to her son.
"Superboy and the Invisible Girl" is the daughter, Natalie's, first attempt to explain how her mother's fixation on Gabe's death makes Natalie feel.
Listen to one of these songs and then explain how the lyrics or images within the song support the plot that I've outlined above or introduce another theme you see in the song.
the plays/musicals sound very interesting. i really like performances. i know how much work they require to be successful and i think that you're so lucky to have been able to watch these. i listened to "superboy and the invisible girl" which was kind of weird but most music from musicals are...i guess i feel that what is considered "normal" differs for everyone and that "mental illness" can be really just that, in your head. i think mentally ill people are sometimes smarter than they are given credit for. after reading "one flew over the cuckoo's nest" in high school, i particularly gained that impression.
ReplyDeleteas for diane's use of drugs to numb her pain, i think that many people do things for a similar effect and for the purpose of masking the pain of their lives. i'm no expert, but this rarely works in most literature and media. i feel so sorry for the people out there that have no source of comfort, that we, as members of the church of Jesus Christ are so blessed to possess. there are so many people and friends within our ward alone that we can go to. i obviously do not know all the facts about the plot, but i wonder whether diane is an archetype for those who are merely trying to make it through life. although she may be unable to help it, i think that diane seems kind of selfish to be such a poor mom to her still-living daughter, who probably wishes for/expects something more from her mother.
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