We wanted to pass on the link to a fantastic interview with Mish Weaver by Jo Childs for Run Riot. Called ‘Circus meets the Mind’, it really gets to the heart of Mish’s work on bipolar circus and the reasons behind the creation of Box of Frogs, her Unlimited Commission that we feature in PUSH ME. Its powerful, provocative and punchy – like the show itself.
So here are just a few choice quotes from the interview to persuade you to go and read the full article yourself!
“My obsession and passion is Circus. And my experience is Bipolar Disorder. So on a very personal level – it’s bringing the two together. Because that’s what goes on in my head, pretty much all the time. But it is NOT a show about me. It’s an abstract marriage between bipolar disorder and circus, and what happens when the two worlds meet. Circus seemed like exactly the right home for bipolar disorder – exactly the right place for it to live and be.”
[Has bipolar disorder enhanced your creativity?] “I’ve no idea, I can’t say, because I know plenty of great artists that don’t have Bipolar Disorder. When I was a kid, I used to think that the deep depression made me into a great writer. I thought I you couldn’t write fabulous stuff unless you were chronically depressed. But then you go back and read it later – and it’s just miserable stuff! I think at one time, it may have made me a great performer – a great Aerialist. I didn’t care physically what was going to happen to me. And I think that can be quite a watchable quality in an Aerialist! But that makes me feel really uneasy now – uneasy that people were watching that. ”
“I am trying to be brave enough to show that Bipolar Disorder doesn’t necessarily make you into a very attractive individual… A lot of people think that the Aerialist character in the show plays me, which I find really funny. Some people even think she is me, which is even funnier because I couldn’t do what she does in a million years! But it’s because she displays temper, a terrible temper. And that’s been a real life-long challenge of the disorder for me. My mania has quite often been fury and aggression. ”
”I think a lot of my attempts to display the negative side of mania goes slightly over some peoples heads. They understand the big performer, the confidence, the brightness – they understand all that. To a certain extent, they understand the extreme enthusiasm, and the big risk taker. But they don’t always understand that there is no OFF switch, there’s no OFF button with mania. At one point in the show, one of the performers has a toy, and another performer is begging him to: ‘turn it off, turn it off!’ And he replies: ‘but there isn’t an off switch, there isn’t an off switch!’ ”
”The the feedback so far has been fascinating. What I really didn’t see coming, was that it really works for young people. One teenager wrote: ‘I didn’t know that other people felt that way.’ And I realised, that if I had seen the show when I was 15 or 16, my life could have been incredibly different. Because I had no comprehension then, of how destructive my mood swings were going to be. ”
To read the full article, click here and search for Mish Weaver.