Therapy through Theatre: Duncan Macmillan’s Every Brilliant Thing

Abstract

This paper analyses Every Brilliant Thing (2013) by the contemporary British playwright Duncan Macmillan with regard to grief and bereavement theories. The main focus here is the meaning reconstruction during grief and bereavement period in the light of the ideas of psychiatrists such as Sigmund Freud, William Worden, Dennis Klass and Robert A. Neimeyer. The study examines, on the one hand, the loss of meaning, existential questioning and suicidal depression of the chief character in the play whose mother commits suicide; on the other, reconstruction of meaning and self in bereavement period through interactive stand-up comedy. Focusing on the latest developments in clinical studies about meaning reconstruction and their successful outcomes in grief and bereavement period after a tragic loss through expressive arts, the paper discusses whether theatre, an expressive art, can be used as a laboratory or a clinic in solving contemporary social and individual problems. In this sense, Macmillan’s play provides us with fruitful information about new trends of the contemporary theatre. The purpose of the paper is to discuss the role of theatre in the healing process of diseases that are related to modern life respecting social responsibility that is a common tendency of contemporary theatre.