Zöe Murtagh and Tory Copeland: Sacré Blue

Zöe Murtagh performs a coming-of-age piece (created in collaboration with Tory Copeland), in which she talks us through her realisation of her own anxiety, and what that means, having completed a course of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. She takes to the microphone and talks openly and frankly about what it feels like to know that you suffer from anxiety, and what happens when she experiences a panic attack.

Murtagh potters around the cupboard and washing line that dress the stage, in a section that hints at, but could unpack further, the necessity to perform certain rituals and to order things in particular ways in obsessive compulsive tendencies that can form part of anxiety disorder.

As she begins to speak, Murtagh’s factual information and personal conversations are well written, informative and honest: ‘I have anxiety, it’s mine’ is an important statement that helps dissipate the stigma that surrounds mental illness. The work is at risk of becoming a narcissistic take on a personal experience when it has the potential to speak to every man and woman; to make wider statements about society and mental illness as a whole. The foundations are here to make a fair work into an interrogative one.

Speech, movement, demonstrations and factual information create different sections that include movement, poems, props and suits. As part of CBT exercise, the viewers are taken through a series of physical interventions designed to change the physical symptoms of panic. What if these were developed into a movement phrase? Or what if the audience were required to join in? The film Labyrinth is described using the characters and narrative as a metaphor for overcoming anxiety and dealing with every possible outcome, the worst and the best, which creates a funny and imaginative way of changing automatic thinking and assessing the risk of worrying events.

Tirades of negative thinking, real concerns and worries flow from Murtagh’s clear speech like a waterfall of overwhelming thoughts. She works her way through a wedge of note cards, each with a worry, a trigger or a prediction on it, getting faster and faster until the floor is covered in this splurge from an anxious brain. This is a beautiful moment where the abundance of negative thought is made tangible for those who might not understand the feeling. Wearing a suit with physical symptoms velcro’d to the body parts, and a hat complete with tentacles that hold what goes on in the brain, creates an visual metaphor for diagrams that are used to explain the physical symptoms in CBT.

There are many promising sections in this piece that need to be developed further via a more profound understanding of the condition, and a deeper creative exploration of where each idea can go. Audience members are given paper bags which they are invited to fill with air and throw onto the stage at the end, but with no reference to them earlier on, this feels like an add-on – but it could be a resounding feature and motif.

Murtagh is a likeable and honest performer who attacks a subject that is a rising problem and key in terms of developing awareness in society today. She is incredibly brave to expose her own experience in order to tackle such a complex subject. Sacré Blue  is funny, informative and a joyful take on mental illness – further development of the piece is encouraged.

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About Rebecca JS Nice

Rebecca worked as a dance teacher, lecturer and choreographer for eight years specialising in tap and jazz. She has a background in Art History and is currently training further in medieval history and contemporary choreography with a particular interest in live art. At the early stage of her dance writing career, Rebecca reviews and analyses theatre and dance performance and is working on a papers for publication.