The Disability Information and Resource Centre

Community Arts Network SA, as part of its Community Arts Development Program, and the Disability & Arts Transition Team, are presenting a disability and arts Funding Application Workshop (view the flyer in pdf or doc formats).

This will be a free workshop for artists and arts workers on the ins and outs of applying to funding programs.

11am to 3pm

Wednesday 10 February 2010

Topics covered include:

• How to explain your idea
• Understanding the criteria
• Getting your budget right

Guest presentations by Arts SA

Clare Tizard, Manager
Richard Llewellyn Arts & Disability Trust
and Community Arts Development Fund

Sandra Naulty, Manager
Independent Makers & Presenters

Lunch and drinks provided
View the access and dietary requirements form
Or phone us on 8231 0900 with your requirements

Where

Restless Studio
Community Arts Network SA (view map)
234a Sturt St Adelaide
(Enter off Arthur St)

RSVP Essential

Monday 8 February 2010

8231 0900

datt@cansa.net.au

Experience this dynamic, humourous and insightful new work that looks at madness and creativity through the eyes of a psychiatrist, his patient and his frustrated artist wife.
Following the performance the writer, Nina Pearce,  invites you to share and discuss your thoughts on the work and the issues relating to mental illness within the piece.

Where: SA Writer’s Centre 2nd Floor, 187 Rundle Street, Adelaide SA 5000

When:   Sunday 4th Oct at 3pm & 6:30pm  & Friday 9th Oct at 7:30pm

Cost:     $10 general admission;  $5 unemployed

In my final year of drama school in 2005 I experienced a manic episode that resulted in a month of paranoia, psychosis and delusions. I was told I was bipolar, a diagnosis that was soon retracted after subsequent assessment.

My first play ‘This Place’ is my way of looking at what goes on in the mind of someone who is experiencing a manic episode and comparing it to the experience of a tempestuous artist who is trying to make sense of the world around her. Eliza, the patient, believes she is creating headlines telepathically in the newspaper. She feels overwhelming responsibility for the plight of the world. Olivia, the artist, is fed up with hearing about the world’s repetitive problems. The growing sense of impending doom is sapping her creativity. Gareth, Olivia’s husband and Eliza’s psychiatrist, doesn’t let such things phase him. His happy theory is to ignore the front page and do the crossword instead. Like many of us, it’s important to find distractions in a world that seems to be going more and more insane as time goes on.

Since then I have been taking mood stabilising medication and have been fortunate enough not to have had another episode since. My sister had a similar ‘one off’ episode in her early twenties, and we both remember much of what being inside psychosis was like. I remember why I thought certain things, why I did the bizarre things that I did and I remember that while much of it was frightening and tragic, much of it was also quite fun and enlightening for me and even for those around me. After the experience I became hyper-aware of just how prevalent mental illness is in the community and how little is understood about it by those not affected by it.

As part of Mental Health Week this year, five.point.one present the latest draft of  ‘This Place’ at the SA Writer’s Centre, directed by Corey Mcmahon, and performed by Craig Behenna, Tamara Lee and myself. I really urge anyone interested in these ideas, in new writing and in our collective experience with mental illness to come to the performance and participate in a Q and A session afterwards. I’m eager to have feedback from the community. Your input would be invaluable to the development of the play. Hope to see you there.

Nina Pearce.

www.arts.sa.gov.au

www.mhcsa.org.au/

www.sawriters.on.net