Depression is one of the most overlooked mental conditions in many societies around the globe. In Australia alone, 10% of the male population and 20% of the female population will suffer from this condition. However, most individuals do not recognise the need to seek help and the mental condition tends to be swept under the carpet until something triggers an extreme response to it – suicide. Every year, there will be around 2000 suicides occurring in Australia and a large proportion of them are individuals suffering from depression. Awareness of this condition is rising but is still lacking and this performance project proposal aims to help more individuals understand on a more confronting basis.
The performance project proposal will most likely be in the style of the typical public service commercial, except that there will be multiple commercials going on simultaneously. A part of the performance that will focus on demonstrating the possible symptoms of depression; another will be portraying the various types of depression. There will be a presentation of the consequences that may follow with and without help. These consequences could highlight the various methods of suicide for those who did not seek help and also, the various methods of recovery or managing of the condition.
Visual mediums will also be used, with snippets taken from films, such as 15 and Prozac Nation playing in the background with no audio. Photographs and a brief biography of various creative individuals, along with individuals from all walks of life will be placed around the space. Audience will be encouraged to participate by getting them to describe how they feel as they watch the performance. There will also be performers who will walk the ground and speak random thoughts in reply to the various responses. This will, hopefully, allow more individuals to recognise and retain the information provided that will be essential in identifying the condition.
Clara this is a very interesting research area. What is not clear to me yet in your proposal is how you specifically argue that new media technologies are the right tools to respond to this community issue - ie your job in this presentation is not to cover the issue of depression alone, but rather to cover why it can be served by the performance work in question. If you are devising public service commercial, then you will also need to justify why this form is the right form for the issue, and how it connects with other forms of performance (or performance experiments) covered in the course. We can talk about this more in class tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteDepression is definitely an interesting yet controversial topic area. You say how you will highlight those seeking help and those who do not. A suggestion I have would be those people who do seek help but have people who do not accept the condition, or fail to be helpful to them. Not many people consider depression as an illness as it can be ‘all in the persons head and can snap out of it at any time. Yet it leads to so many suicides a year. Hence your project can make people more aware that it is becoming Australia’s number disease.
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