Give Me Your Love // Ridiculusmus

Being stuck in a box is the central image of Give Me Your Love, both as a metaphor and as a literal attempt by the central character to deal with PTSD from military service. A former member of the Welsh Guards haunted by his experiences in Iraq, Zach hides within and speaks from inside his pockmarked cardboard shelter. This first box is contained within another, the grimy walls of a dilapidated flat, another four walls to keep people out and away from his damage. The voices which intrude from the outside corridor, a wife and a friend, are trying to offer help without adequate support from a government that makes cynical use of its soldiers.

Combat stress, PTSD and other mental health issues are endemic to veterans, compounded today by the nefarious project of austerity and a culture of silence (particularly for men). The turn towards self-medication, like the self-prescribed MDMA cure pursued by Zach, occurs when other effective treatments are unavailable. As mental health services are cut by governments, defunded and under-supported, more and more people are cut adrift, even when their injuries are the result of their national service. MDMA has proved remarkably successful in clinical trials, but such initiatives occupy a bleak confluence of political blindspots – the trauma of war and the scars it leaves, the effectiveness of a drug long demonised and the recognition that what has already been offered has been markedly inadequate.

Whilst men and women are still sent to kill in the name of a nation, they are owed the support and medicine to deal with the after-effects of this responsibility. Whether, as Zach’s delirious monologue suggests, he witnessed a heinous decapitation or is simply traumatised by the lack of action during his tour, clinical innovation through projects like MDMA therapy deserve the support of the countries that sends it citizens to work as soldiers. War is hell, but a purgatory of distress and flashbacks is no acceptable journey home.

-       Lewis Church

Links relevant to this diagnosis:

Give Me Your Love – Ridiculusmus

Combat Stress – The Veteran's Mental Health Charity

Treating PTSD with MDMA-Assisted Therapy

MDMA for PTSD? – Live Science

Concerned Clinicians and Researchers Network

War Neuroses: Netley Hospital, 1918 – Wellcome Archive

DROPPED // Gobsmacked Theatre Company

It’s an irony as old as time. Women may be seen as fit subjects for every conceivable violence, but they are not suitable for fight in war. From recent conflicts in Iraq, Afganistan and elsewhere, women's roles in the armed forces seem to extend little past the 2D. Physical, mental, societal violence is fit and fair game. But for a woman to fight in times of conflict has, until very recently, been seen as a frightening or morally disgusting transgression.  

Dropped may deal with a fictional Middle Eastern conflict with Australian personnel (the show originally ran at the Adelaide Fringe earlier in 2016 and was awarded the prize for Best Local Theatre Production), but it’s topical concern to British audiences is amplified by July’s lifting of the ban on women serving in close combat roles in the British Army. The performance poses the question to the audience: what effect does the violence of war have on women?

The answer, if there is one reducible answer, is that there is a difference, if only because of the warped saint-like expectations visited on women: those of holy mother, or kindly protector. They may experience the same traumas, deprivations and horrors as the male soldier in times of war, but the concern visited from outside isn’t to do with them as soldiers, but as mothers or uprooted occupiers of the domestic space.

We are led as an audience to believe that Sarah Cullinan and Natalia Sledz’ characters have witnessed the harm of a child, though it remains shrouded in mystery whether this a just an effect of PTSD related trauma. The effects of David McVicar’s direction leaves it purposefully ambiguous and offers no ready made, trite conclusions as to the effects of violence.

- FG

Dropped played at the Pleasance Courtyard - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/dropped

British Army’s Women Soldiers to Go Into Combat- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/12060225/British-Armys-women-soldiers-to-go-into-combat.html

On Motherhood and Violence- http://makhzin.org/issues/feminisms/on-motherhood-and-violence

Women, Trauma and PTSD- http://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/treatment/women/women-trauma-ptsd.asp

Gender based violence and the global hypocricy that fuels it- http://www.humanosphere.org/opinion/2016/06/gender-based-violence-misogyny-and-a-global-hypocrisy-that-fuels-it/

Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War- http://www.unicef.org/sowc96pk/sexviol.htm