From The Advocate Weekly in Pittsfield, Mass.:The winter is usually a dark time for area theaters. But this weekend, the Barrington Stage Company will raise the curtain and shine the spotlight on mental illness.
"Living With It," written and performed by Frank La Frazia, (pictured) will bring the light of day to living with bipolar disorder. La Frazia, BSC's director of the Playwright Mentoring Project, will make his BSC acting debut on Stage 2 on Linden Street in Pittsfield this Friday through Sunday, Feb. 6 through 8.
La Frazia's solo autobiographical piece will let audiences experience his life as a teenager living with a bipolar mother.
La Frazia, who worked at Bennington College in Bennington, Vt., for several years, took a solo acting class there with professor Kirk Jackson.
"He helped me shape it into a 20-minute piece," La Frazia said last week before a rehearsal. But perhaps La Frazia's biggest help came from the at-risk youth he works with on a daily basis through the Playwright Mentoring Project. The teenagers in the program, he said, bring their daily challenges and issues - sexuality, drugs, school problems - to the group.
"We teach them theater games and have them act out those issues," he said.
The work culminates with pieces student-performed pieces that are based on those issues."I feel like working with the Playwright Mentoring Project helped me to make this piece. The kids helped inspire me," he said.
From that 20-minute piece drafted at Bennington College, La Frazia went on to flesh it out to an hour-long solo piece, which had its debut at Main Street Stage in North Adams last year.
"It takes place when I was 13. It was a very pivotal moment in our lives, because my sister went away to college and never came back. My mom slipped her worst that summer," he said.
"But it's not just my story," he said. "What's more important to me is that we can talk about mental illness, and that it's not so stigmatized . and that we realize that these are people living with mental illness, not mentally ill people," he said.
The piece came to the attention of Molly Boxer, president of the board of the Berkshire County chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
"A friend of mine had seen it at Main Street Stage and said, 'You have got to see this and use it for NAMI because it's such a powerful piece,'" Boxer said.
NAMI-BC and the piece are perfectly suited for one another.
"NAMI is all about supporting family members of those with mental illness. Frank writes a lot about the struggles our members have," she said.
Thus, there will be a panel discussion following Saturday night's performance. The panel will include Boxer, who has a son who is mentally ill, other board members and a person who is mentally ill, as well as La Frazia and his sister, Terry, she said.
"It's important to let people who are suffering through the impact of having someone in the family with mental illness know that they are not alone," Boxer said.
That isolation is something Boxer and other families like hers are very familiar with.
"The best way I can illustrate it . I have a sister who has a son with a serious brain injury," she said. "It's much easier for people to accept, talk about and support that." When her nephew was hospitalized, Boxer said, her sister received flowers, casseroles, phone calls and an outpouring of support.
"My son, who has a mental illness, which is just as devastating, but in a different way," she said. "When he was hospitalized, we received no flowers, no casseroles and a little support. The difference is very striking."
The impact of having a family member with mental illness goes beyond the immediate isolation. It has long-lasting effects, as well. "My sister, who's a therapist, is working on her own issues. I joke with her and say, 'Good. You go work on it, and I'll make art out of it,'" La Frazia said with a smile.
"But I don't want it to be drama therapy. That's not what it's about."
La Frazia emphasized that it's important for people to realize that mental illness often manifests itself in the teen years. His mother, in fact, had her first episode as a teenager.
"They had a hard time figuring out how to react or what to do," he said.
Julianne Boyd, artistic director of BSC, knew, once she watched the taped version La Frazia showed her, that a show with this type of subject matter was a risk, but it was a risk worth taking.
"I love taking risks. Theater itself is a risk. It's an important subject. I'll take a risk on an important subject, but not for something silly," she said. "I want people to realize it's one of those shows where you learn a lot, but it's also entertaining."
She added that the following weekend, the theater will present "Kiss This! A Valentine's Cabaret." Theatergoers, she said, can "be moved and think a little, and the next weekend be totally entertained."
"We're hoping that this will be another effort to get mental illness out of the shadows - to demystify and destigmatize mental illness," Boxer said.
Boyd echoed that goal.
"I think it's an opportunity for people to learn about a disorder that's often pushed under the carpet," she said.