The Eradication of Schizophrenia in Western Lapland

The first of a trilogy of work to be developed over the next 5 years focusing on mental health, The Eradication of Schizophrenia in Western Lapland is an investigation of auditory hallucination through the lens of one family’s experience of psychoses. The audience is immersed in this recreation through an ambitious and innovative split staging arrangement: the action and dialogue from two different sequences of scenes are simultaneously performed to two different groups of audience in the same space. The work is inspired by the “Open Dialogue” treatment method for psychosis developed by Dr Jaakko Seikkula in Finland, which has virtually eradicated schizophrenia from Western Lapland. It conjures up a comic nightmare of delusion while offering a hopeful world of polyphonic uncertainty, a world where dialogue can transform your life. Based on the idea that psychosis happens “between people” and not “within”, it focuses treatment on the network of relationships surrounding a person.