Migration, Mental Illness and Terry Watada's The Tale of a Mask

Abstract

Developed and produced at Toronto's Workman Theatre Project (WTP) in 1993, Terry Watada's play The Tale of a Mask weaves a Japanese folktale with a contemporary tragedy inspired by a double murder and suicide in Vancouver. Since 1991, the WTP has collaborated with playwrights to develop plays that educate audiences about mental illness and destabilize representations that perpetuate stigma. The Tale of a Mask was developed as part of a WTP initiative to investigate multiculturalism, immigration, and mental illness in Canada. The eponymous mask of the title, the author argues, acts as an enigmatic symbol for mental illness read differently by different cultures. Elabore et realise au Workman Theatre Project (WTP) de Toronto en 1993, The Tale of a Mask de Terry Watada est un conte japonais populaire entrelace avec une tragedie contemporaine inspiree par un double meurtre et suicide a Vancouver. Depuis 1991, le WTP a collabore avec des dramaturges pour elaborer des pieces de theâtre qui renseignent les auditoires sur les maladies mentales et destabilisent les representations qui perpetuent les stigmates. The Tale of a Mask a ete elabore dans le cadre d'une initiative du WTP pour examiner de plus pres le multiculturalisme, l'immigration et les maladies mentales au Canada. Le masque mentionne dans le titre represente, d'apres l'auteure, un symbole enigmatique de la sante mentale percu differemment par differentes cultures. How might mental illness be performed on a contemporary Canadian stage? This deceptively simple question lies at the heart of an innovative theatre company attached to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto. Since 1989, the Workman Theatre Project (WTP) has sought to produce plays about mental illness. Their more than 20 productions have had the dual aim of giving voice to artists who have experienced mental illness and educating the public in order to combat the stigma of mental illness. In The Last Taboo: A Survival Guide to Mental Health in Canada (2001), Scott Simmie and Julia Nunes argue that many people who have received mental health services in Canada cite stigma as worse than mental illness itself: social discrimination, stigma, and isolation may compound and exacerbate the suffering of people diagnosed with mental illness. Moreover, stigma may prevent people suffering with mental illness from seeking help, professional or otherwise. Left to cope with illness on their own, people may become vulnerable to a host of ill effects, a range of self-destructive behaviours, or suicide. For WTP members, such high stakes create a forceful need to combat stigma-a need that informs much of their creative work. The project's dramaturgical process involves collaboration between commissioned professional playwrights, actors and directors with an interest in mental illness issues, and project members.1 At its broadest level, the WTP seeks both to destabilize mental illness representations that perpetuate stigma and to highlight the impossibility of ever wholly fixing or knowing mental illness on stage. Terry Watada's The Tale of a Mask, staged at the WTP in 1993, was developed and performed as part of a broader WTP initiative to investigate multiculturalism, immigration, and mental illness in Canada. It is a tragedy based on the real life and death of Fumiyo Takabe, a Japanese immigrant who became profoundly isolated and depressed in her new home of Vancouver in 1990 and took her own life and that of her husband and sons.2 The Tale of a Mask tells a parallel story about a central character named Aiko Shinde, her husband Masato, and her son Kentaro, who experience isolation, stigma, and cultural misunderstanding when they immigrate to Toronto from Japan in 1992. In a state of extreme depression, Aiko kills Masato, Kentaro, and herself. While the play's broad narrative seems to posit a direct relationship between real and represented events, its formal structure aims to do the opposite. …