'It blows my mind' : intoxicated performances by Ridiculusmus

The article describes the play *Give Me Your Love*, part of a trilogy examining innovative mental health therapies, created in response to the first UK trials of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for chronic treatment-resistant PTSD. The play features two Welsh squaddies attempting a homemade version of the trials. The authors reflect on recreating intoxication and the interplay between therapists and clients, as well as between performers and audience. The staging uses a cardboard box and locked-out performer to explore transitions in consciousness. The article considers the performance as a form of public engagement, set against critical responses about whether it is mind-blowing.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Give Me Your Love by Jon Haynes and David Woods, Artistic Directors of Ridiculusmus, is the second in a trilogy Dialogue As The Embodiment of Love, to be presented in 2018, a series of plays investigating innovative mental health therapies. Give Me Your Love is a response to the first UK trials of MDMA assisted psychotherapy for chronic treatment resistant PTSD. The work has been made in partnership with psychologists Peter Kinderman and Anne Cooke, and Ben Sessa, the lead researcher of clinical trials in the UK. This article includes extracts of a dialogue between the two writer-performers reflecting on their personal and collective efforts to conjure, channel and recreate intoxication. It considers the affective interplay between therapists and client in the clinical therapy process, and a conterminous interaction between performers and audience in the production. In the play two Welsh squaddies attempt a homemade version of the trials that they have missed out on. With one performer in a cardboard box and the other locked outside of the performing area, Woods and Haynes channel physical and psychological recreations of their research, attempting to take their audiences on an experiential immersion but also exposing the theatrical context. Aspects of dramaturgy and staging that play with transitions and interruptions in consciousness are also considered here. In Give Me Your Love, the ‘absence’ of the complete actors’ bodies foregrounds, amongst other things, the experience of the present audience, in their box. Set against a critical response to the work that it does or does not ‘blow [me] away’ (a hipster update on the 1960s account of experiences that could ‘blow [my] mind’) the article thus considers the performance, as a form of public engagement