Mental Health with Strindberg.

or, the night we did drugs in his garret.

ME: Uh…Strindberg?

STRINDBERG: Who’s there?

ME: It’s Sara? I wanted to ask you a professional question. Is this a bad time?

STRINDBERG: Well I’m about to reveal the face of God by alchemically transmuting zinc and gold salts.

ME: Oh. I’ll come back.

STRINDBERG: No no, sit down, the zinc needs time to harden anyway. Gruel?

ME: No thanks. Nice garret. No windows, huh?

STRINDBERG: There are windows, but if you look closely you’ll see I’ve covered them with thick brown paper.

ME: Oh, so you have. Uh… why have you done that?

STRINDBERG: The windows were watching me.

ME: They were?

STRINDBERG: Always have.

ME: Right. So you’re in the middle of a full mental collapse right now, is that correct?

STRINDBERG: Yeah, I am, yes.

ME: And you’re calling it your Inferno period?¹

STRINDBERG: My Inferno, yeah. Look, my lead crystals and I have an appointment to discuss the holy trinity at 11 so what is it you wanted to ask me? Crust of bread?

ME: No thank you.

STRINDBERG: Herring?

ME: Uh, I had herring for lunch actually, so. What I wanted to ask you, Mr. Strindberg, is let’s say I was offered a really great professional opportunity, but I knew with full certainty that accepting it would risk my inner peace. Should I take the opportunity or turn it down to protect my mental health?

STRINDBERG: What’s that?

ME: What I mean is…you work so hard to get to where you are in the theater, a career that can be so unrewarding, I don’t even think it counts as a career most of the time. And that’s the conflict: this opportunity could push me professionally closer to where I have spent my life striving to be artistically, but deeper into personal chaos. Now I know what you’re thinking, Strindberg— what makes me so sure it’ll turn out that way? I won’t bore you with the details but, trust me, I’m sure. The thing is, I value my mental health above my career. That sounds obvious now but this is a fairly recent development for me. I used to put my mental health dead last. I used to think that if I sacrificed my own well-being to the theater, offered it up to Dionysus like a dead goat, it proved my dedication and commitment. Warriors suffer and I was a warrior! I viewed abuse, from others and myself, as the price of success. I tolerated it, because I never learned not to. I mean, I trained as an actor in the 1900s for god's sake. Strasberg, Stanislavsky and all those guys taught women that if theater doesn’t hurt I was doing it wrong. (God forbid I was taught Stella Adler, right? She didn’t do it that way. She was like, “hey assholes, protect your emotions and use your imagination!” anyway, I digress.) But I’ll be honest, it wasn’t just misogynist acting techniques that fucked my head up, it was an innate lack of self-worth. But I’m not like this anymore. It’s taken me a lifetime of introspection and re-reprogramming to get to where my default is self-love. My mental health is my crown jewel now and I have a rotating wall of Beefeater guards in big hats protecting it 24/7. Don’t get me wrong, I'm an artist, so I can do discomfort, I love a challenge, I strive for the impossible, I especially gravitate toward darkness and pain in art, theater, comedy and music— but actually feeling bad? Saying yes to certain demoralization just so I can bring something shiny back to my bird’s nest of a resume? No thanks. But I’m still tempted because of that all-powerful career boost. What do you think, Strindberg?

STRINDBERG: No, what’s “mental health?”

ME: Oh… what?

STRINDBERG: I have no idea what you’re talking about.

ME: OK. Mental health is like being healthy but just in your brain.

STRINDBERG: Where the demon lives?

ME: Uh…Do you mean that literally or figuratively?

STRINDBERG: Literally, of course! I am the plaything of an unknown power.

ME: Right, you’re mid-inferno now, I forgot.

STRINDBERG: Yes! Although, shhhh.

ME: What?

STRINDBERG: I don’t want the demon to hear this, but I have a way to quiet him!

ME: What is it?

STRINDBERG: Potassium bromide. It calms the nerves of the criminally insane. And also women.

ME: Oh. Well, I’m a woman.

STRINDBERG: And I’m criminally insane! Let’s do potassium bromide together!

ME: OK! How do you take it?

STRINDBERG: Crush it up in water and knock it back.

(August Strindberg and I dose a heroic amount of potassium bromide and wait a few minutes for the effects.)

ME: I don’t feel anything.

STRINDBERG: Give it a second. It’s worth it.

ME: OK. So what do you think of my whole professional vs mental health situation?

STRINDBERG: I say bring the ruckus.

ME: Do you mean… accept this opportunity but with an awareness that it will be demoralizing so that when the demoralization begins, I should twist it around and demoralize right back?

STRINDBERG: Could be interesting.

ME: I just don’t have it in me to play games. A long-time collaborator of mine, director Melissa Firlit, once told me her primary objective as a theater maker is to “create a room full of joy.”

STRINDBERG: Oh god no she must be stopped!

ME: No no, I think you misunderstand what she’s saying, Strindberg. She doesn’t mean everyone and everything has to project happiness and toxic positivity all the time or that the play’s subject matter should be happy happy happy like a barbeque in Stepford, Connecticut. She means whatever we do in the theater, everyone should feel good to their bones. Even if we are staging the bleakest of plays like 4.48 Psychosis or Titus Andronicus or Long Day’s Journey Into Night, everyone must feel taken care of, valued and held up. From the intern to the lead actor to the playwright to the box office kid. If there is a single moment of demoralization, then we cease to be making theater and enter into Ego Town and from there it’s just a quick detour into the swamps of Covert Narcissism City.

STRINDBERG: Did the bromide kick for you in yet?

ME: I’m definitely feeling something now.

STRINDBERG: Same. So what you’re saying is, the dark and disturbing should just live in the play and never be truly felt?

ME: Yeah, that’s it. I actually think that is what theater is for!

STRINDBERG: Hm. Even though I’m high and in the midst of a psychological cataclysm so bad I’ve named it, I think I agree with you. My play Miss Julie is pretty dark and disturbing and like, everybody went crazy calling it pornographic and misogynist blah blah blah but what I was trying to say is that class, gender, race, social status, all that? It’s just bullshit, right? ‘Cause we’re really all just horned-up animals playing cat and mouse in a tiny kitchen where the only exit is death.

ME: Yeah. You kinda sound tonally different on potassium bromide than you did before you took potassium bromide.

STRINDBERG: That’s why I take it.

ME: Right. But to your point, you wouldn’t want anyone to literally feel bad while rehearsing Miss Julie, would you? You should feel joy while rehearsing misery, right?

STRINDBERG: I mean, I’ve never really thought about any of this but ideally, I guess, yeah, joy would be good.

ME: Then I don’t know what to do about this opportunity. Can I get another shot of bromide?

STRINDBERG: Way ahead of you.

ME: I had a moment of reckoning with this.

STRINDBERG: Love a good moment of reckoning.

ME: It happened many years ago, but it haunts me to this day. I’m not keeping you from seeing the face of God, am I?

STRINDBERG: Fuck that guy.

ME: OK. You really are different on this stuff. Anyway, so this is kind of awful to recall, and if we can keep this just between you and me Strindberg, I would appreciate it. But I once alienated an entire cast of a play of mine. Over the course of building this new play which started out so beautifully, we went from a loving and huggy cast, into a resentful, silent cast.

STRINDBERG: Like alchemy.

ME: Yeah! And after the final performance, each actor packed up their stuff and peaced without a word. I remember one actor walked right by me, eyes down, heading straight for the door. I won’t get into the specifics of why all this happened, but I do accept my part in it and have evolved massively from it. And I’ve spent a lot of time with my therapist untangling what I think went wrong on that show and I’ve taken full accountability for what I think caused it. My shrink encourages me to forgive myself, which I’m horrible at, but I do try. Years later, I did get to apologize to 2 of the actors involved, both of whom were kind and assured me we were good. (The other I’m still nervous to apologize to and haven’t seen since. I’m not quite sure how they’d react and as an introvert terrified of confrontation, I don’t go looking for trouble. But I would apologize if it felt safe and right.) When I think back on that time, I realize now what a terrible wrong I inflicted upon that team and play. I transformed what should have been a “room full of joy” into a room full of resentment.

STRINDBERG: Alchemy, again.

ME: There are only a few things in my life I regret on a bone-deep level and that’s one of them. One of the actors still has me blocked on Insta.

STRINDBERG: I have no idea what that last sentence means but I will say it’s theater, you know? And with theater, weirdnesses are unavoidable. Breaking up is unavoidable. Arguing, clashes, people acting like assholes, saying things we instantly regret? Unavoidable. We are trafficking in our souls! So of course we do stupid shit! If I had a krona for every time I’ve acted like a raving lunatic in the theater I’d be a goddam Swedish millionaire.

ME: Yeah. You know what I feel the most guilt about with that whole thing? That I became their mental health crisis. I made it hard for them. So over the years, I’ve vowed never to do that again, either to myself or others. Oh! I just had an epiphany!

STRINDBERG: Oh! Me too!

ME: What’s yours?

STRINDBERG: What’s yours?

ME: You go first.

STRINDBERG: No you go, I’m Strindberg.

ME: Ok I was just gonna say I’m going to decline the opportunity. What were you gonna say?

STRINDBERG: That I am renouncing realism!

ME: That’s a great idea, Strindberg!

STRINDBERG: Yeah, yeah! From now on, I’m just gonna write out my dreams in the form of plays! Where the occult and the supernatural leak into the lives of everyday people! Where secrets and repression are currency and time and space no longer exist! I’m gonna write plays that have no beginning and no end that are super claustrophobic.

ME: I love this idea! But can you keep the room joyful?

STRINDBERG: I’ll try, but theater is hard. Now pass me my retort and alembic.

1. All sourced from August Strindberg’s autobiographical novel about his psychological unraveling, Inferno, 1896.