Please go check out this play. It was written by a very dear friend of mine. She's one of the sweetest and most talented women there are. I only wish I could make it into town for the performance.
http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070528/LIFE/705280314/1086From tragedy comes a drama
After Jen Dalton's brother - who had schizophrenia - killed himself, she was moved to tell his story with a play
BY JOHN JOHNSTON |
JJOHNSTON@ENQUIRER.COME-mail | Print | digg us! | del.icio.us!
Rob Dalton was a handsome young man who enjoyed snowboarding, listening to music and spending time with friends and family.
He was 23 when the brain disorder known as paranoid schizophrenia pulled him into a tortured world where he lost touch with reality.
It was a world of hallucinations and delusions. A world where he wore an empty expression and received telepathic messages from Martha Stewart. Where he looked at a painting and saw people plotting to kill him. Where he heard voices sending him on government missions and urging him to avoid his medication. Where he fancied himself a martial arts master, one who practiced his moves in his underwear in his parents' front yard.
He inhabited that world for three years until the day in 2003 when the 26-year-old took his own life.
His struggles and his parents' efforts to cope with his illness are the focus of "Mad," a play written by his older sister, Jen Dalton. It will debut this week at the Cincinnati Fringe Festival, with the first of five performances on Wednesday.
Writing the intensely personal play helped her heal, says Dalton, who is 33 and lives in Northside. But it was more than a therapeutic exercise.
She hopes the play raises awareness and opens a discussion about mental illness, which carries such a stigma that many people won't discuss it. She wants families to know help is available and to understand that with treatment, people with schizophrenia can function in society.
"The main message I want people to take away from this is that mental illness is not anybody's fault," says Dalton, special projects reporter for WKRC-TV (Channel 12) and its sister digital channel, CinCW.
That's an important message, says Dr. John Hawkins, a psychiatrist and board member of the Hamilton County chapter of NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. He'll participate in a question-and-answer session after Sunday's performance.
"There are situations where the parents excessively blame themselves to the point where it really impairs their own mental health, as well as their ability to find ways to more effectively interact with their child who's struggling with the illness," he says.
The specific causes of schizophrenia are unclear, experts say, but it's believed to result from a combination of genetic and environmental factors. The disorder affects about 1 percent of the U.S. population.
It usually appears in men in their late teens or early 20s, and in women in their 20s and 30s. Symptoms can include hallucinations that cause people to see and hear things not present; delusions that cause people to believe others are plotting against them; lack of expression, social withdrawal and difficulty organizing thoughts.
People with schizophrenia rarely commit violent crimes, Hawkins says. But the National Institute of Mental Health says they attempt suicide at a much higher rate than people in the general population. About 10 percent succeed.
Rob Dalton was working a factory job and living with friends when he began saying bizarre things. That same week, he left his truck running, stole a car by hot-wiring it and led police on a three-county chase.
After his capture, he was evaluated by a psychiatrist, diagnosed, and placed in a mental-health facility. A couple of months later he came to live with his parents in their suburban Columbus home.
He sometimes hid the fact that he wasn't taking his medication. He thought the government was trying to poison him.
Still, his family occasionally saw glimpses of the Rob they once knew, his sister says.
"He would say to my mom, 'I'm so sorry I'm hurting you. I just can't help it.'
"That's what breaks your heart."
After her brother's death, Dalton knew she would one day write about his sickness. An incident after a Reds game late last summer convinced her the time was right.
She saw a panhandler mumbling to himself. He wore the same blank expression her brother had at the depth of his illness.
"Why don't you get a job?" a passerby said.
Dalton turned to the passerby and blurted: "He can't!"
"If someone had cancer," she says now, "you wouldn't say, 'Oh, just get a job.' "
She ran the idea of a play past her parents, Margaret and Gary Dalton. They gave their blessing, and she interviewed them at Thanksgiving. In January, Dalton got word that "Mad" had been accepted by the Fringe Festival.
She has acted with several theater troupes and once co-wrote a play, but this is Dalton's first full production as writer and producer. That alone is enough to give her jitters, but what really scares her is the thought of her parents sitting in the audience.
At first they said they wouldn't come. A few weeks ago, they changed their minds.
Dalton worries her parents might be hurt by what they see, even though the play portrays them as heroes.
"I want them to know that I think they were courageous, because they never ever gave up on him."
Margaret Dalton declined to speak directly with this reporter, but through Jen she said that even though seeing the play will be difficult, she and her husband decided to attend to show support for their daughter.
As for how she's doing, Margaret said: "It's taken four years to get to this point, but I'm OK. I think about (Rob) every day and I pray for him every night. Time helps, you know, because the feelings don't stay at that level of rawness that they are at the beginning."
As she wrote "Mad," Jen Dalton couldn't avoid an unhappy ending. Her hope is that other families can avoid that fate. She's arranged for NAMI to distribute literature about mental illness and suicide prevention at each performance. The organization's services include support groups to help families cope.
"If this play helps bring that to the forefront," Hawkins says, "it has the potential to actually save lives."
What: "Mad," a play by Jen Dalton
When: 7 p.m. Wednesday; 6:30 p.m. Sunday; 7 p.m. June 5; 8:30 p.m. June 7; 9:15 p.m. June 8 during the Cincinnati Fringe Festival. A question-and-answer session with psychiatrist John Hawkins follows the Sunday performance.
Where: New Stage Collective Theater, 1140 Main St., Over-the-Rhine
Tickets: $10 (after a one-time purchase of a $2 Fringe button). Festival passes also available.
Information: The Fringe Festival runs Wednesday-June 9 at various locations in Over-the-Rhine and downtown. Ticket information and play schedules at
www.cincyfringe.com; 513-621-2787.
For general information about schizophrenia and other mental health issues, visit:
National Institute of Mental Health:
www.nimh.nih.gov.NAMI, National Alliance on Mental Illness:
www.nami.org.The NAMI Web site contains links to local chapters in Hamilton, Butler, Warren and Clermont counties, as well as a Northern Kentucky chapter. Among the services are support groups and the Family-to-Family Education Program for families of people with severe mental illnesses. Classes are taught by trained family members.
United Way's 211 staff has access to an extensive mental health resource database. Dial 211.
Crisis hot lines
800-273-8255 (National Suicide Prevention Lifeline) or visit
www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org 513 281-2273 (Talbert House)
