“I think ‘OK, I’m a person, you’re a person, we’re going to be in this room for an hour or so”

In Help! (Wardrobe Theatre, Feb 22-24), performer, activist and director Viki Browne presents a touching, humorous and joyous show about asking for help after her world was shattered by mental ill health.

“Viki jumps into a bush. She isn’t coping. Welcome to her sequin-encrusted world. Rats wear capes, butters race and you’re invited to dance in the disco of dirty secrets. Help! is about falling apart, pulling yourself together and being surprised by what you’re left with. It is for anyone who’s ever struggled.”

Winner of Best Actress and Best Original Show nominee at Reading Fringe Festival. “Browne’s endearingly comic piece cleverly uses metaphor to point up the importance of asking for help” – The Guardian

So, Vicki. Tell us about the format of Help! It is a series of anecdotes from your life? Or more a kind of visual representation of how mental illness, and asking for help, feels?
Help! is about the first time I asked for help, and when I realized I needed support for my mental health. It communicates what it feels like to suffer from anxiety and depression in participatory pop-culture references that anyone can understand.
I’m interested in mental illness not being something over there happening to someone else, I want audiences to get right up close and personal with it, but obviously not the real thing. I’ve been there and I can safely say that I wouldn’t wish severe anxiety or depression on my worst enemy.

Part of the show features you asking audience members up onstage to help you put yourself back together again. Is that unpredicctability exciting or nerve-wracking?
I spend most of the piece doing bits of audience participation that lead up to that moment. So by that point everyone is really on board. There is a bit before that which is really nerve-wracking. I won’t actually continue the performance unless someone helps me. That’s the most nerve-wracking moment for me, because I know that if no one comes up the show won’t go on. Luckily that’s never happened, someone has got up even if it takes a few minutes, but I love that moment where everyone in the audience is looking round at each other, and a few people have got to the edges of their seats and are like… are you going to, or am I? Who’s going to be brave enough?

What message, or thoughts, do you hope to send audiences away with at the end of the evening?
I hope that everyone has been able to connect with the story in some way. That people feel uplifted, like they’ve had fun but also been invited to think about a challenging issue in a non-threatening way. I hope that people feel better able to have conversations about mental illness, anxiety and depression. That maybe it will inspire a conversation with someone else about how they are feeling, encourage them to ask for help or to ask someone who they think might be experiencing mental health issues if else if they need anything, or whether there is any way they could help.

Making a piece of theatre for public consumption is always a brave thing to do – for someone who has experienced mental health difficulties (which I imagine must include doubts about your own self-worth…?) as well must be braver still. Has the show taken a lot of courage to make?
Ha ha, yes. I have incredibly low self-worth and self-esteem, which is probably a bit of a surprise coming from a solo performer. I get incredibly nervous before a performance. I have a current diagnosis of severe anxiety, so at the beginning of the performance I stand at the door of the theatre and get the chance to meet everyone as they come in at the door. This really settles me, I think ‘OK, I’m a person, you’re a person, we’re going to be in this room for an hour or so. I’m going to go on stage and do some stuff, you’re going to sit here. It’s all going to be fine’.

Has making and performing Help! been cathartic for you, and if so, in what ways?
Making performance has always been a way for me to better process understand and understand things going on around me, and Help! is no exception to that. I think that anxiety and depression often feel like things that can totally take over. I’ll have a panic attack in the middle of the supermarket or I’ll burst into tears coming down the stairs and have to spend the rest of the day in bed. It can feel like something I’m not in control of, and so I think that finding a way to communicate this story to others has been a way for me to better understand my experience and in some way author and take control of it.
I also find that performance (when it is going well) is like enforced mindfulness. You’re on stage, loads of people are looking at you and you have to be really present. If your brain is off thinking about something else, you don’t give a very good performance. So in that respect, the amount of concentration it takes to perform can sometimes turn off all the anxiety running round my head (at least for the length of the performance, then it can come rushing back).
I found making the show such a transformative experience that I started working with mental health service users, and in the last year I have co-founded Many Minds, a charity that makes performance with people who identify with having experienced mental illness.

In what proportions do you think humour and more serious themes coexist in the show, or is it impossible to pick them apart?
Well, I use humour to tell a story that otherwise would be too difficult for me to tell. Humour is the only way that I can talk so openly and honestly about it. It’s also a good way to get people engaged with mental illness. I can’t imagine much worse than sitting in front of someone watching them being depressed. Ha, I do enough of that in my own time let alone wanting to watch someone do it in the theatre!

Viki Browne performs Help! at the Wardrobe Theatre from Feb 22-24. For more info, visit thewardrobetheatre.com/livetheatre/help

For more info on Viki and Many Minds, visit vikibrowne.com, www.facebook.com/vikibrowneartist, many-minds.org