Icarus Project NYC: Mad Maps and Forum Theater
Saturday, May 30th, 2015 5:10 pm - 7:00 pm John Jay College of Criminal Justice 524 West 59th Street New York, NY 10019
The Icarus Project is a support network and media project formed by those who wish to challenge mental health diagnoses and mental illness. Icarus Project NYC has recently started a Forum Theater group that brings the approaches of Mad Maps into a more social and performative format. We take examples from lived experiences - communication, conflict, relations of power and knowledge - and turn them into scenes portrayed by several actors. After a short presentation, we ask specific questions to the crowd about what they saw and experienced. We then invite volunteers from the audience to re-enter these scenes and change their dynamic and outcome. Some themes that we look to cover in these skits include the influence of the biomedical model in psychiatric diagnosis, the limited language around mental illness and extreme states of consciousness, and strategies to use tools of anti-oppression in everyday experience. Mad Maps and Forum Theater are inteded to inspire personal investigation and collective transformation. We are looking to extend the reach of these tools into new groups and institutions, and TIP NYC hopes to forge new connections and networks through this event.
More Panel/Workshop Information
Reading List:
Augusto Boal: The Rainbow of Desire: The Boal Method of Theatre and Therapy
Augusto Boal: Theatre of the Oppressed
[https://www.bps.org.uk/system/files/user-files/Division%20of%20Clinical%20Psychology/public/understanding_psychosis_-final_19th_nov_2014.pdf](https://www.bps.org.uk/system/files/user-files/Division%20of%20Clinical%20Psychology/public/understanding_psychosis-_final_19th_nov_2014.pdf)
Participants
Chair/Facilitator: Sascha Altman DuBrul
Speakers/Co-Facilitators: Name: Rebecca Stabile Name: Erin Lemkey Name: Jonah Bossewitch