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Crazy

Goddard grad turns troubles into art

“When I was five, I spent 50 minutes each week with the first of my 18 therapists,” confides Gail Marlene Schwartz, standing by her white 1970s bicycle with noisemakers on its spokes.

With that honest disclosure, Schwartz launches into a vignette of her kindergarten-aged experiences. Her first therapist, she explains, “seemed to have an endless supply of creative tactics designed to get me to open up” – stuffed bunnies, easels, self-portraits, and passing notes among them. Even with his persistence, a long journey remained ahead of Schwartz.

“Crazy scares me,” says Schwartz to her audience, as she moves further into her autobiographical one-woman multi-media comic drama.

Next Saturday, March 22, Gail Marlene Schwartz will be onstage in Montpelier at College Hall Chapel, performing “Crazy.” In the performance piece, she explores experiences of depression and anxiety, what is “crazy” and what is “normal,” and how we heal. With humor, some Broadway tunes, sensitivity, and powerful personal videos, she deals with issues of mental health and the stigma of “illness.”
Her play is the first piece of the evening’s program. A panel discussion with mental health professionals and peers follows. The third element is a performance art workshop led by Schwartz.

“I look at the play as an invitation; telling my story to start a larger dialog,” said Schwartz.

“Crazy” comes to Montpelier as the fourth stop in a five-college tour, sponsored by VSA Arts of Vermont. VSAVT is a not-for-profit arts and education organization dedicated to making the world of the arts accessible to Vermonters of all abilities.
The goal of this program “to help reduce the stigma associated with mental illness, especially anxiety and depression,” said Judith Chalmer, executive director of VSAVT.

“The show is a really rich compilation of comedy, music, videography and monologues,” said Chalmer. “Gail uses the power of comedy and optimism in balance with the crises of depression. People have shed tears of appreciation. Some say, ‘I didn’t know you could make something beautiful and fun out of this.’”
Schwartz, who now lives in Burlington and Montreal, took the first steps toward developing “Crazy” while she was a graduate student at Goddard College in 2001. In a bad relationship, and feeling worse and worse, she was considering dropping her studies.

“I had a wonderful advisor who suggested I talk, write, move, sing, about what I was feeling as a process – as an artist focused on what I was experiencing,” she recalls. “I took out the video camera and started recording. I began writing my dreams, doing movement, painting and crying – sometimes I would mix my tears with the paint.”

“I filmed myself crying, when I felt like I couldn’t move, if I felt suicidal. I filmed my deepest darkest states – and I became curious what I looked like,” she recalls. Through this process, she was recognizing her own questions about medications and paradigms of illness.

As an artist, Schwartz began “taking all those experiences that were dark and painful and making them into something beautiful.” In 2003, “Crazy” was in an early form and had its workshop debut at the Barre Universalist Church.

“I have worked on it slowly and intentionally,” she said. In 2006, “Crazy” was selected for performance by the New York International Film Festival, but Schwartz’s schedule conflicts precluded performing it there. “Crazy,” is now in its 30th draft.
“Now I feel very strongly that it’s done – it’s rounded out,” Schwartz said.

The play is a collage of stories integrated with video clips. It is auto-biographical, but also creative. With characters drawn from life and from her imagination, Schwartz shares glimpses of styles of therapy she sampled over the years. She includes personal moments — like a conflict with her mother complete with a mad dash down the street and youthful triumph.

Schwartz views the three pieces of the evening’s program as a whole.
“It is not just me and my story, it’s about how we can take those experiences to get to broader questions. I am interested in helping people become empowered about their condition,” she said.

Discussion panelists on Saturday will include Ed Paquin, executive director of Vermont Protection and Advocacy, Steven Morgan, of the Peer Recovery Center, and others. This portion of the program often includes conversations about going on and off medications, perceptions of mental illness, and community-based ways to address anxiety and depression.

The final program element, the workshop, “is hands-down my favorite part,” said Schwartz. “People realize that this is kind of fun. The playfulness doesn’t downplay the pain, it makes it approachable. It makes things softer and more accessible.”

Through the workshop, Schwartz uses performance art to address personal responses to depression and anxiety. She has an array of activities for participants.
“There’s no pressure; it’s a chance for people who are there to get to play with the subject. I try to bring aspects of my process into it.”

“The focus of this tour is breaking down stigma,” said Schwartz. “This is not something that people are comfortable talking about. When people behave in a way that doesn’t make sense, others walk away from it as something scary. That isolation harms all of us.”

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