About "Hearing Voices "
HEARING VOICES by CLARE SUMMERSKILL
Performed by Clare Summerskill, and her company ARTEMIS.
Throughout this brand new play we hear the stories of six real-life people who recently met as patients on an acute secure psychiatric ward in a London hospital, the writer of this piece being one of them. The entire script is taken from interviews conducted by the writer with each of the patients and combined with extracts from the writer's own diary about her time on the ward. The result is a unique and powerful piece of verbatim theatre, which explores the experiences of Mental Health Service Users behind locked doors.
The stories that are told in this piece represent the "voices" of the patients that were never heard by the consultants or the nurses on the ward. This ground-breaking piece of theatre reveals the views and personal histories of a group of people who are often hidden and excluded from mainstream society and allows their voices to finally be heard.
Funded by The Arts Council