The ritual of theatre

Apologies for this being over a month late. I was very busy the start of the school year. This is my first free weekend in a while!

Musical theatre has been a source of magic for me my whole life. Beginning in my young adulthood I began going regularly to the theatre, seeing new college or regional shows, listening to cast albums, and watching filmed versions and other material. It’s part of how I met my partner. At some point, going to the theatre, turning off my phone, and watching a live show that was either new and exhilarating or familiar and beloved became some sort of spiritual ritual.

Even though I live in the greater NYC now, Broadway has gotten ridiculously expensive, so my partner and I still make trips to see favorite shows in regional theatres within driving distance. We recently (…in late August) took a trip to the Berkshires for Barrington Stage Company’s production of Next to Normal. This was my third time seeing a fully staged production of the show, after a production I worked on in college (2019) and the Westport Country Playhouse production (2022). I’ve read the libretto itself at least twice, and it’s one of those shows I’ve listened to so much I basically have it memorized.

I have spilled thousands of unpublished words on Next to Normal, most in the dramaturgy packet I made when I worked on a student-run production in college, or in the script for a video essay I began during a (hypo)manic phase in 2021 and never finished. There’s so many layers, motifs, and ways productions could simplify it and get it all wrong.

Yes, like the main character Diana, I also have bipolar disorder, although mine is less severe (Bipolar II, while Diana is likely Bipolar I, experiencing more intense manic episodes while mine are better categorized as hypomanic, although no one I talk to know what that means so sometimes I just say manic). I was into the show before I was diagnosed…indeed, as evidenced by the video essay phase, I was really into the show during the episode that led to my diagnosis three years ago.

But Next to Normal is ultimately about grief and trauma and how that can be a major trigger for the illness as well as something the whole family has to deal with to move on. This is personified by the dead son, Gabe, as he “approaches” is 18th birthday. But he’s not simply Diana’s delusion, either, although yes he also is. He also interacts with the other characters to display his relationship with them. It’s something that only properly works in the theatre.

That fateful episode three years ago was its own trauma for me. I basically lost a job I loved over it. I still encounter those aftereffects (or “Aftershocks”?) as a teacher again now, because I’m so afraid of it happening again. Somehow, admitting this summer that I was in another hypomanic phase calmed me. It wasn’t just something that happened three years ago. It was a chronic condition. And I could manage it.

When seeing a new production of a beloved show, it can take a little while to immerse yourself and stop making comparisons to the cast album and other productions. As usual, I found myself narrating along in my head as if with a friend who had not seen the show before.

The first act felt a little disorienting. Part of the highlight of the songs for me, “You Don’t Know”/”I Am the One” and maybe a little bit of “Superboy and the Invisible Girl” felt like they were at a faster tempo, which made me wonder if I was a little manic. Maybe that’s the point, but I don’t think it did the songs justice.

This was the first production of this show I’ve seen with projection design, and it too left me disoriented in the first act—although, as my partner pointed out, perhaps that was the point. I mean, I liked it generally, but then there were several times when it was just a recording of what the actors were doing, and that felt a little too simple to me and took away from the live performances? But as it went on, I found it to be used more and more complexly and always had an underlying meaning.

And I became lost in the story. I teared up. I heard others in the audience sniffle. Going through those last five songs is its own ritual, the catharsis breaking like waves—Diana and Natalie being honest with each other, Natalie confessing her fears to Henry that one day she might end up crazy too, Diana leaving, Dan saying Gabe’s name, and the notion that “And you find out you don’t have to be happy at all / To be happy you’re alive.”

I’ve been working on a novel on and off since 2019. It’s about many things, but what I thought it was about when I started, while still present, has receded. The trauma the main character has endured has sharpened. The careful plot shape I constructed has turned from a depressive relapse to some sort of mania, and the larger arc involves at least the possibility of bipolar disorder now.

I didn’t even have to change anything. Even before I had my first major hypomanic episode, before I was diagnosed, I was writing an arc where my character displayed many symptoms of a manic episode. A book that was originally intended for me to probe into my depressive moments morphed into something more complex when I actually sat down to plot and write snippets of the third (out of five) act.

This book has an arc toward acceptance in the face of uncertainty, just like Next to Normal, and I feel like I’ve finally reached that point in my life as well. (Mostly?)

I spent the summer exploring different genres and styles of writing, but overall I lacked a strong goal. I felt like I was avoiding something, and I was. But after what I went through, I think I’m finally ready to revisit this novel. I think I know what it is really about this time. And I yearn to sink into a long project and feel that sense of accomplishment and progress.

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