November 10, 2004
A Return to Madness
Bill Baker and the Our Own Voice Theatre Troupe stage The Passion of Joni Dark.
by ALEX COOKE
“I think it’s really about paternalism and the way we treat one another,” Bill Baker explains about his latest play. “It’s about how mental health workers treat their clients, how America treats the rest of the world, and how parents treat their children - the whole thing about ‘this is for your own good.’ It’s an issue that concerns me - as an American, as a mental health professional, and as a father.”
In the first play of Our Own Voice’s 14th season, The Passion of Joni Dark signals something of a return for the company. For Bill Baker, OOV’s founder and artistic director, it is a return to his familiar role as playwright and director. For the company itself, The Passion of Joni Dark is a return to the theme of mental health and to issues surrounding stigma and the label of mental illness.
It was a desire to address these issues and empower those marginalized by mental illness that lead to the creation of the Our Own Voice Theatre Troupe in 1991, and such concerns figured prominently in the company’s early productions, such as Johnny Be Normal and This is Not an Outlet. Since 1999, however, OOV productions have encompassed a wider variety of topics, and more recent productions, such as Common Ground and Ephemera, have helped to establish a wider public appeal.
The Passion of Joni Dark reaches back to the ideas central to OOV’s inception and presents its concerns in a style consistent with the company’s recent development.
“This play returns to the criticism of treatment issues but focuses more on modern science and modern culture,” observes Khyber Daniel, a founding member of OOV who also plays the psychiatric technician John Mathew in Joni Dark. “We’re coming back to mental health issues in a much more popular form, in the way people experience it through mass media and
communication. I think the stagecraft reflects that.”
Bill Baker accomplishes this through the story of a modern-day Joan of Arc, a diagnosed schizophrenic and politically outspoken eighteen-year-old, urged into acts of deviance by the voices of “angels”. “If Joan of Arc were alive today,” states Baker, “if she were to claim that the saints were speaking to her, she would have a mental health diagnosis. In her time, Joan of Arc was compelled by these voices to take a strong political stance, and it’s extraordinary that an eighteen-year-old girl could oust and occupying army by clinging to those visions.”
In telling the story of Joni Dark, Baker utilizes the truly popular format of a Dr. Phil-like daytime TV talk show (with all the commercials included for comic relief).
“What would be the equivalent of a catholic church inquisition in the twenty-first century?” Asks Baker. “I would say that it’s the daily trials that we see everyday on television, where they tell people what is acceptable behavior and what is not.... The values of our time are very much set by these arbiters of normality.... Our thoughts about normality are
shaped, maybe even more so, by consumerism and the images we see in commercials.”
Opposite the talk show's kindly condescending host, played by longtime company member John Rutkauskas, is Sarah Rushakoff in the title role of Joni Dark. For Rushakoff, who began her very active involvement with OOV in 2000, The Passion of Joni Dark is a particularly important production. “It deals directly with the core of our mission statement, “ she says. “This is the first play in a long time to really create that dialogue about mental illness. I missed out on that part of Our Own Voice.” Rushakoff will make her directorial debut with Our Own Voice in their second production of the season, imagination, one. It too will take up the topic of schizophrenia and attempt to further the dialogue about mental illness.