Dementia

Dementia
I was privileged enough to have witnesses something spectacular last night at the Worcester Arts Workshop. What I witnessed was something profoundly gut wrenching, something that touched the very depths of my soul and stirred such powerful emotions that you would not have believe me had I said to you that I silently wept through it.
I witnessed an incredibly powerful full mask touring production of , Finding Joy; a funny, touching, vital, and heroic tale of dementia. Of how a young man learns to put his addictions aside to care for his grandma.

What it shows, is the true reality regarding dementia, what inevitably many of us will have to go through personally as victim & witness. It brings home the harsh reality of what many experience daily and what many are yet to go through.
This brave production , performed excellently by VAMOS , is performed without words. Thus making it all the more poignant & significant. The actions strking, gestures amplified, the flow poetic and the meaning sublime.

Here in the west we are blessed with the arts, where people through comedy and theatre can tackle such emotive issues and talk about them openly. I wish that this universal message can cross boundaries and can break traditional taboo's across cultures where often debilitating or degenerative diseases are misunderstood and hidden often through fear, ignorance and lack of understanding.

Everyone including those in the care & nursing or adult/social care industry should be made to see this film so as to better educate them regarding the issues regards dementia. The show will be on again at the Swan theatre 20th July 2013.