In Stories for Mental Illness “A Wall is a Road”
Fridays at 7:30pm/Saturdays at 2pm
March 8, 2013
March 16, 2013
Location
1436 SW Montgomery Street
Portland, Oregon 97212
For More Information:
503-459-4500 (Well Arts Office)
katy@wellarts.org
www.wellarts.org
Cost: $8 preorder, $10 at the door, $5 students/seniors.
PORTLAND, Ore., January 28, 2013—
What does your life become when every day you make the choice between giving up,
making it work, or just keep breathing? Explore that with Well Arts, as we perform
stories written by people with mental illness diagnoses at the National Alliance on Mental
Illness Center of Washington County. In these stories, there is laughter, bravery, and
passionate hope on even the darkest days . This show, "A Wall Is A Road," is generously
hosted at Portland Actors' Conservatory, 1436 SW Montgomery Street, March 8-16th,
Fridays at 7:30pm and Saturdays at 2pm. Tickets are $8 pre-sale, $10 at the door, and
always $5 for students and seniors. For more information, visit us at www.wellarts.org.
Beautiful Minds is an ongoing writing-for-theatre workshop at NAMI Washington
County. Every 2nd and 4th Saturday of the month, from 11am-12:30pm, participants
work with a professional theatre director from Well Arts to craft their experiences and
imaginings into performable stories. Once a year, Well Arts auditions and rehearses
actors who work with the participants-turned-playwrights to perform stories from the
workshop on stage for the general public. Well Arts is an arts-in-medicine 501(c)3
nonprofit that provides writing and oral history workshops for people with physical or
mental illness, or social trauma, that culminates in public performances of stories written
by people in the workshops. The goal is that empathy, honoring, creativity, learning, and
community-building becomes an important part of all of our healing.
###
Kill Date: March 16th, 2013
Link for Show Graphic
http://wellarts.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/A-Wall-Is-A-Road.jpg
Calendar Blurb
Professional actors perform stories about life’s big choices, written by people living with
mental illness in our community, in the Well Arts Production, “A Wall Is A Road”
performing at Portland Actors Conservatory’s Historic Firehouse Theatre, March 8-16th
Fridays at 7:30pm, Saturday at 2pm. Tickets are $8 preorder, $10 at the door, $5
students/seniors, at www.wellarts.org, or by calling 503-459-4500.
Cast List
Jessica Geffen
Sharon Mann*
Samson Syharath
Rick Zimmer
* indicates a returning Well Arts actor
Quotes from the Script
They’ll hire people with IQs of 70, and keep them on for years. But since I’m bipolar,
they think I’m a murderer or something.”
-From Robin Layne
“A resentful mind can not find love.”
-From Caleb Ennis
“Just because I have a good facade. You don't see the pain that screams inside me.”
-From Jan Goakey
“They finally understood each other and could be a real family. “Like on TV”
-From Chris Davis
Topic Suggestions For Stories:

Mental illness and social relationships.



The stage as a place for a community to explore itself around issues that affect
everyone.
The interaction between (and relevance of) professional arts and the community
Combating the perception that arts aren’t a daily part of ordinary people’s lives.
A Little Research About The Field:
“As a mentally ill musical theatre fan, depictions of characters who share that trait with
me typically fall into one of two categories: they a) don't exist or they b) make me rage.”
–“Stage Left” a review for “Next to Normal” published by B*tch Magazine
http://bitchmagazine.org/post/stage-left-mental-illness-and-treatment-in-next-to-normal
“Extensive research has revealed that when people put their emotional upheavals into
words, their physical and mental health improves markedly.”
- Forming a Story: The Health Benefits of Narrative John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Clin
Psychol 55: 1243–1254, 1999
“Clinical experience suggests that patients who are able to tell a story about their futures,
specifically describing the details of their living arrangements, sobriety maintenance,
social support, and work lives, tend to be more effective in bringing those plans to
fruition… a narrative approach helps move clients away from problem-dominated stories
and toward newly constructed preferred stories.”
-“Telling A Good Story: Using Narrative in Vocational Rehabilitation with Veterans” by
Thomas S. Krieshok et al in The Career Development Quarterly/ March 1999, Vol 47
“A narrative view values content, and in seeking to understand delusions and
hallucinations, as opposed to explaining them (Jaspers, 1974), one is engaged in recontextualising the illness in the life experience of the individual.”
- “Narrative and severe mental illness: what place do stories have in an evidence-based
world?” by Glenn A. Roberts in Advances in Psychiatric Treatment (2000) 6: 432-441
doi: 10.1192/apt.6.6.432