『블루/오렌지』에 나타난 수행적 행위로서 정신과적 진단과 드라마투르기적 함의

Abstract

This paper aims to explore psychiatric diagnosis represented in Joe Penhall’s Blue/Orange and offer insights into contemporary mental health drama’s contextualisation of psychiatry’s power/knowledge nexus. The play is concerned with Christopher, a young black man who is about to be released after his 28 days of observation in a hospital in London. However, the psychiatrist in charge, Bruce, intends to keep Christopher longer because he suspects him of being a paranoid schizophrenic. I examine strategies of undermining authority as well as the power of heterotopic staging in order to ascertain if and how the play subverts psychiatry’s authority. I suggest the play offers an account of how the hierarchical structures of mental health care induce individual suffering, not only on the side of the service users but also on that of the staff side. In short, I assert it is precisely Penhall’s approach to the aspect of the invisible that can facilitate a metacognitive stance in spectators because it provides both a rupture that carries some of the weight of the play’s ethical criticism and it serves as a repeated reminder to question psychiatry’s authority which seems to rest on matters of interpretation and semantics. (Dongguk University-Seoul)