Collage film about R.D. Laing, who spearheaded the social and cultural revolutions of the 1960s, weaves archival material with his own filmic observations. For Laing normality meant adjusting ourselves to the mystification of an alienating world.
Esquizo takes place in a psychiatric hospital. A mental patient (Serena Vergano) is escorted into an operating room, where electrodes are attached to her scalp. The doctors dissect his brain and we enter the brain with a loud, jarring cry. In this space detached from reality, a group of actors perform elaborate interpretive dances. They jump, land on top of each other, place their hands on their bodies and form various shapes.
One in five Americans is taking a psychiatric drug, including millions of children. Pharmaceutical companies have over-hyped the benefits of these drugs, while hiding the risks and severe side effects including physiological dependence. "Medicating Normal" explores what happens when for- profit medicine intersects with human beings in distress.
A solo show whose subject - the controversial Scottish psychiatrist Ronald David Laing - has largely faded from public view, starring an actor who doesn't impersonate him. Scottish actor explores Laing's life and work from the perspective of an unnamed genial ad mirer who says he has just come from Laing's funeral in 1989.
