Me and My Mood Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Part 4

Wherein we try to discuss depression in a way that isn't depressing.

Part 1.

Part 2.

Part 3.

A couple years ago, I saw a truly stellar production of Sarah Kane's play Crave at Signature Theater in Arlington. It was acted with tremendous skill and passion by all involved, and the design and direction were impeccable.

For those of you not familiar with the play, it involves four nameless characters talking to themselves, the audience and each other in a largely plotless exploration of the human psyche. It's written with no small measure of poetic and lyrical skill. Kane, who struggled with severe depression for many years before killing herself at the age of 28, makes depression manifest theatrically through the play. For the hour-or-so running time, you really get what it is to be depressed, to deal with a depressed person, to be in the presence of depression. Speaking as someone who's dealt with depression, I've never seen a more accurate portrayal.

Which is why it's the worst play ever written.

Here's the thing: depression is stupid. Depression is boring. Depression is incredibly annoying.

Depression is incredibly difficult to depict artistically because, if you really get it right, your audience is going to want to punch your depressed character in the face after about five minutes. And not in the good, gee-I'm-really-mad-at-Willy-Loman-for-being-such-a-schmuck kind of way. No, I mean they'll really, truly want to punch the characters in the face. They'll have difficulty staying in their seats and not doing just that. Just like, if you're ever around a depressed person for more than five minutes in real life, you'll start looking around for heavy objects to bludgeon them with.

Crave does for depression what Irréversible did for rape -- which is to say, it gives you way too goddamn much of it. If Kane had managed to give you maybe two minutes of that pure, mainline shot of what it is to be depressed, and then written an actual play around it, she would have had something pretty brilliant. Instead, she barfs it out onstage and makes the audience wallow in it. Because, like all depressives (myself included), she was addicted to the deliciousness of her own misery.

Actor John Lescault fondles the pulverized hopes and dreams of the Signature Theater audience.

The funny thing is, a lot of the time when you're depressed, you can see how annoying you are; you can see how little sense your own emotional state makes, how out of step it is with the reality of your life.

But you can't help it.

For me, the thing that's horrifying about depression isn't just that it feels like you're in the grip of some evil, alien force that distorts the entire world... it's that the evil, alien force is you. It's your own brain. Your own personality.

And on some level, it feels... well, not good, but... yours. It's addictive, in the way that teenagers find their own overblown emotional drama way more interesting than anyone else ever could.

That's it, actually -- you want to know what it's like to be depressed? Imagine all the emo parts of your teen years, then multiply them by ten. Oh, and you can't get out of bed.

WHYYYYYYYYYYY?!?

Note that I said can't get out of bed, not won't. There were mornings, back before I got treatment, when I wanted nothing more than to be able to roll over enough so that I would fall out of bed on to the floor, never mind actually being able to get up to do anything. And while getting up would have been about as hard as bench pressing three or four tons, I felt incredibly guilty, because all that was keeping me in bed were feelings. Like, the feelings that make it hard to get up on a Monday morning... but turned up to 1000.

I could go on, but... well, I don't want to be Sarah Kane. It's bad enough they keep rewarding her for killing herself by producing her plays. Suffice to say that depression sucks, in the way that having your collarbone broken "hurts". You really can't describe it much better than that, but the word doesn't quite do it justice. Thank god for Wellbutrin.

I'd just like to state once more for the record that the folks I saw do Crave at Signature did an incredible job with it. It's just that the play itself is a theatrical abortion.

Girls, girls... you're both... incredibly depressing.

Next time, the politics of mental illness, or "Why I'm Telling You All This Crap".

-- The Prolix Wag
I have an obligation to share my brilliance. It's like noblesse oblige, only a little less noblesse.