madness: response

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                Jasdeep Sahota

                Edexcel drama coursework

                Madness: response

                November 2005

Madness could be defined as the condition of being insane. For the duration of our exam we were looking into the idea of madness and how it is perceived in the past and present society. I believe that we were given the topic of madness because it has always existed in different forms and has been handled in different ways. There are many different views regarding madness and therefore it would bring up a variety of ideas from different people. The first activity that we carried out as part of the exam was for everybody to write down words they associated with madness. I believe that this was done in order for us to open up our minds to other people’s perceptions of madness. These may give us inspiration for when we begin to put together performances relating to madness.  

After finding out that we would be studying madness for the duration of the exam I began to research the subject and I realized that there are many forms of madness. In terms of mental illness, there is schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic and other severe anxiety disorders, autism and pervasive developmental disorders, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, borderline personality disorder, and other severe and persistent mental illnesses that affect the brain. Sometimes madness could also be seen as a positive characteristic for an individual to possess depending on there age and the social circle they belong in. Within a teenage group of boys, for one to be “mad” in terms of “crazy” it would be likely that people would think they are fun individual to be around.

Stimuli are used in order to cause responses. In every drama session we were given a stimuli, this forced us to assess our preconception regarding a subject, our past experiences will affect the way in which perceive a certain aspect of life. In my opinion madness can only be defined in the context it is put in.

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For the third session we were given the picture below

The picture above shows an individual in a Victorian mental institute, he seems to be the centre of attention at that moment in time. The people surrounding this “main character” seem to be laughing at him- perhaps he wants the attention of these people or he may have lost control of his actions. The look on his face shows fear of something or someone and perhaps he is trying to protect himself from this threat.

As a group we discussed ...

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