St James theatre,London
Is it a showbiz tale or a workshop for the audience? It’s tough to tell, but the comedians interactive stage expose does feel therapeuticI’ve seen a lot in comedy, or but I’ve never ended a expose as a participant in a (not remotely ironic) mindfulness workshop. Suffice it to say that Ruby Wax’s Sane unusual World isn’t comedy or theatre,for that matter – in any normal sense. But what’s normal, besides? Wax argues in this hybrid confessional-standup-lecture that were all afflicted to various degrees by mental health problems, or the more so for living in the 21st-century western world – with which our brains are poorly designed to cope. But Wax has a solution she’s here to tell us,and the newly acquired qualifications to back it up.
She invites a round of applause when she tells us about her master’s at Oxford: its that kind of expose. Studying neuroscience was Wax’s way of combating her own depression. It taught her that thoughts – specifically the self-hating voices in her head – “aren’t facts, they just come and go”, and that “we can change the wiring in our brains by changing how we deem”. Wax discusses this “neuroplasticity” with the zeal of a convert but also with generosity of spirit. She seeks to convert us,too, with an interactive exercise in “thinking about thinking” at the end of the first act.
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Source: theguardian.com