Program in Rome gives people with mental illness full theater education

From The NY Times:

ROME -- The Italian avant-garde actor and author Dario D’Ambrosi has finally found a home for his 30-year-long passion of working with the mentally ill and producing plays that portray their perspective on life. His Pathological Theater, in the northern section of Rome, may be the first European drama school where people with disabilities not only learn their lines but also design and make sets and costumes, do their own makeup and, finally, conceive dramatic plots.

In a converted warehouse that opened last fall, 15 teachers instruct 60 students — mostly schizophrenic, catatonic, manic-depressive, autistic and those with Down syndrome — on the essentials of stagecraft.

Mr. D’Ambrosi discovered the artistic potential of mental illness when he was 19 and spent three months as a visitor in a mental institution in Milan as research. Soon after, in 1978, he started writing and acting in plays that focused on mental illness and social unease in a country where asylums were officially closed that same year. “I wanted to flee my parents’ house and ended up discovering a different world, a fascinating one,” he said.

After failing to find any theater willing to stage his plays in Italy, Mr. D’Ambrosi sold an old car and moved to the United States in 1980, when he met Ellen Stewart from La MaMa. That theater has steadily produced his plays since. His “Prince of Madness” won a 1993 Obie award; in 1998 he wrote, directed and performed in “The Dis-Adventures of Peter Pan vs. Capitan Maledetto,” which brought his mentally handicapped colleagues to an international stage. Some will return this October for an International Festival of Pathological Theater at La MaMa.

In the meantime his students in Rome are working on a production of “La Dolce Vita,” a play about the afterlife that will have its debut this month. Rehearsals were in full swing one recent rainy afternoon at the school, which consists of a rectangular rehearsal room and theater, a few offices and 10 beds for touring companies.

“I want to be the destiny,” said Alberto Gnocchi, 60, a firm, slender man with deep, dark eyes hidden behind thick glasses. He pictures destiny as a man carrying a cart full of objects from the lives he took and from those he spared, he told Mr. D’Ambrosi.

Mr. Gnocchi has tried to commit suicide 16 times. He is now learning to dance and sing, and how to move his body freely in the space around him.

“Always remember that even if we are not considered important people, we are always leaving a trace behind us,” Giosella Iannaccone, a music therapist, said solemnly. “Let us leave a sonic trace of ourselves here today.”

Twice a month doctors and psychologists meet to assess the pupils’ well-being. Every two months parents gather to share impressions of the program and to learn more about the classes from the teachers.

Marina Fiaschetti, 42, who has Down syndrome, used to carry around a puppet to fight her anxiety and fear of people’s judgment. In 2008 she acted in Mr. D’Ambrosi’s “Medea,” reciting in ancient Greek. She said she no longer needs to carry the puppet.

“I am an actress now,” she said, her eyes sparkling under her clown makeup during the rehearsal.

Studying theater is not a fail-safe cure, but it does help, said Dr. Monica Isabella de la Ventura, a psychologist who works with the company. “Here they are confronted with their biggest fears,” she said. “They are asked to work intensively with the parts of their bodies that do work, not just with those that don’t, as is usually the case.”

Some decrease their daily doses of medicines, some don’t. But interest is high. Some 86 people have already applied to join the school next year.

“Theater brings them all together in a sort of therapy that recognizes their own personality,” said Mr. D’Ambrosi. “Our challenge is to get to know them and to let them know themselves.”

Thanks to his work with the disabled, Mr. D’Ambrosi now spends much of his time attending international conferences. When he first went to the United States in 1980, he didn’t know the language. Now his English is fluent, with a strong Italian accent.

Many of his actors seem to have walked his same path. They have learned a new way of making themselves understood to their public with no interpreters, albeit keeping their own distinctive voices.

“In a certain sense we are trying to detox them,” said Ms. Iannaccone. “Detox them from the isolation they live in.”