When you talk about a play dealing with mental illness, a lot of people may turn off assuming it will be an ‘issue’ play. What’s wrong with ‘issue’ plays? Important social and political stories have always been told through theatre with great effect. Why do then can they make us feel uncomfortable?
‘I’ll be really blunt,’ says playwright Mary Rachel Brown, ‘cause they’re really boring.’ No one wants to sit in the theatre and feel like they’re being beaten over the head with a textbook or someone’s opinion. First and foremost, a writer’s job is to make it entertaining, she says.
