Gilead Amit, contributor
(Image: Ludovic Des Cognets)
The Elastic Theatre company want to change the public perception of obsessive-compulsive disorder. ?"I come from an OCD background myself", explains director Jacek Scarso, who has long been tired of the way people associate the disorder with ritualistic hand-washing or a constant need to check if the door is locked. These simplistic, clich?d images, he argues, do not reflect the true nature of a potentially debilitating condition.
To tackle these stereotypes, the company have been working in close collaboration with psychiatrists and people with OCD to produce Julius, a short film which is being shown at the GV Art gallery in London as part of its Theatre of the Mind season.
Having received funding from the Wellcome Trust and the Jerwood Charitable Foundation, the team see this carefully researched film as just the first part of a longer project, and they are keen for input from the public before they continue. A submissions box in the gallery allows visitors to share their own experiences of the condition, which will inform the follow-up installation Elastic Theatre plan to make.
In the meantime, the film is a very simple, rather poetic story about a young boy named Julius growing up in rural Italy. He develops obsessive thoughts about his famous Roman namesake - thoughts which intrude into his daily life and make it difficult for him to perform everyday actions.
In an attempt to purge himself of these thoughts, Julius constructs an elaborate ritual which involves counting to 33 while moving his hands in a specific pattern. Such actions are consistent with the reality of OCD, where visible "compulsions" are often carried out in an attempt to regain control over the recurrent obsessions.
(Image: Ludovic Des Cognets)
Through a combination of physical performance and contemporary opera, the cast show how the people in Julius's life respond to his condition. A frightened classmate tries to obstruct the ritual, while a grandmother believes Julius is guilty of sinful thoughts and drags him to the local priest.?? All the while, projections onto secondary screens on the ceiling and an adjoining wall show us the overwhelming persistence of Julius's obsessions.??
As his intrusive thoughts become ever more sexually suggestive, Julius's feelings of shame and self-loathing continue to grow. But the more he tries to repress them, the more frequent these obsessive thoughts become. ??It's like being told, "Stop thinking about whatever you're thinking about." Try as you might, the images you're trying to suppress force themselves onto your mind.
We all experience these intrusive thoughts, but most of us learn to prevent them from taking over our lives. For some people, though, they cannot be controlled. And it is the precariously fine line that exists between these two conditions that Julius helps illuminate.
The Theatre of the Mind season will run at GV Art in London until 29 September
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