This is my original adaptation of Workman's article. I did the research for this in the basement of the Gerstein Library in Toronto, realized its dramatic potential and adapted it as a play. This was the basis(never acknowledged!)of the Workman Arts production in 1998. ***** Some Notes About the Production Lisa Brown, a psychiatric nurse turned theatre manager at Workman Arts, never acknowledged that I invented this play, after I showed her my original draft. While this "omission" occurred ten years ago, when my work is discussed without acknowledgment or attribution, it happens again, then and there.  It pisses me off, very much.  Not acknowledging a writer is a form of theft. It would anger any writer, artist, or maker of any thing.  What happened to me, can happen to anyone.  Queen Street Mental Health Centre, Ontario Hospital, The Toronto Asylum, CAMH or $CAMH, call that corporte entity what you will, it has a long tradition of denying individual agency, anonymizing people, and stealing from people -- even sometimes, and most infuriatingly, in their name. Witness the present Transforming Lives campaign, in which the poor and working poor are robbed of a hospital and a ground, in the name of "transforming" them. To return to the immediate scam, I wanted Theatre Topics to publish a letter to at least partially repair this "omission" (or theft), and raising some other issues, but this was summarily rejected by the editor, Sandra Shannon. She acted, I felt, like Elsa Maxwell as a hanging judge, although I wasn't asking for her "judgment," if she even had any, just the publication of a "Letter to the Editor," albeit with a divergent opinion. She objected to my sense of "ENTITLEMENT," although for the life of me I cannot see anything the matter with expecting credit for my ideas, and for my work. I find it rather ironic, even disgusting, when a privileged member of the professoriate, with all the considerable perquisites thereof, objects to such minimal expectations. (I realize now that it was probably because I'm WHITE! But, isn't that RACISM? Yes, that it is!) I think other issues, such as the slimy "public relations" function of state-funded, pseudo-artistic fronts like Workman Arts, and the subordinated status of theatre vs. history in an institutional setting, ought also to have been raised in Theatre Topics. For most officials and mental health-care professionals any "statement" by the Workman Theatre Project is taken as the proverbial "grain of salt." Hence the claim to affect the stigmata of mental illness is vainglorious. Mental health big-wigs are perenially boasting of "removing the stigma of mental illness," while merely concealing the reality under a leering happy clown's face and, of course, glorifying themselves. Without taking into account such considerations, the editors of Theatre Topics are merely tools of uncritical triumphalism, that they would surely notice, and deplore, in any other field. Finally, I think Kirsty Johnson's "research" would have been better if she had spoken to more people involved in the production, besides the director and the mananger, or the circle of her friends, which appear in this case to overlap, not unlike the diegetic space she discusses in her piece.  How about some of the patients, who attended the second performance?  They told me that they found the monologue boring, and therefore hard to follow.  They would have appreciated some more characters.  The characters in my original version were deleted, mainly for fiscal reasons.  It was cheaper!  As it is, Kirsty's "research" seems to have happened in an "untheatrical" hermetic vacuum, without the oxygen of  reality.  She, and the editors at Theatre Topics, especially Sandra "Maxwell" Shannon, should take some air sometime.  It's very bracing.  I hope this helps. _____________________________ Just a few more facts, and then I'll stop. I promise. After researching this text of La Pazzia and adapting it as a play, I worked with the archivist on a display of historical images on the mezzanine overlooking the cafeteria.  In discussing diegetic space, Kirsty should have mentioned that in descending the staircase La Pazzia was also facilitating a connection, a bridge with the past (as it were).  The play production went ahead unimpeded by hospital administration, but this display was very much interfered with.  I do not believe that this was merely because the Theatre group enjoyed some autonomy, but rather because it wasn't taken seriously because it was a theatre group.  This was certainly the attitude among the professionals I dealt with.  This was just the sort of thing the group did, and it didn't bother them very much, because it wasn't reality.  The historical display was "another matter."  While the theatre group could display anti-masturbation devices and probably perform the very act, we were criticized for even mentioning it in a caption.        We finally threatened to hang veils over the offensive pictures.  Of course, this would have been more obvious, and objectionable, than the pictures themselves.  The idea that Workman's original article is terribly concerned with patient dignity is probably spurious.  It's very difficult to know what any author's intentions really are, but dignity seems very far from the tenor of this piece.  It think it's more arguably about the difficulty of identifying the cause of insanity in a brain-scan.  Anyway, La Pazzia is a personification of madness, not a patient or even an individual.  That Workman really cared very much about "patient dignity" is debatable.  He was a sensationalist and a scare-monger who unscrupulously wrote about patients masturbating as a "plague" when, by his own admission, he knew better (you can read about this in Troping the Asylum at the internet archive).  If he'd really cared about his patients' dignity, he'd probably have shown some reticence. Likewise the Workman Theatre's production of La Pazzia.  I thought the production very quickly became a  vehicle (if not a trampoline) for the ideology of Lisa and the local "artistes," like the “director” Anne Steacey, whom she let co-opt it. Steacey basically sat in the archives and selected slides that were projected during the performance. These tended to be hostile to the then-current Tory administration. They had everything to do with Steacey's politcs, but not much to do with the stigmata of mental illness (let alone removing them). A few hours before the first performance I was sitting on the mezzanine.  I overheard one of the administrators talking about me.  She said she wanted to get rid of me, but couldn't because I was "with the gays."  I am gay, and I was friends with several staff members who were indeed gay.  Imagine what it must have been like for gay patients!  That's also how it was (and probably still is)! I have to object to claims that were made by Editor Shannon in her introduction, for "shock value."  This is simply the fond conceit of an academic who knows more about theatre "theory" than mental illness (at least I hope so). I have a doctorate in 18th-century studies (satire, mainly) from the Universite de Montreal,  but I've been for several years a support worker in group homes and shelters in Toronto.  There's absolutely nothing in La Pazzia that would shock me, or any other mental health-care worker.  Finally, some of the satire in Pioneers of Alienism (or "Alienation"?) is informed by this event, page 244 and following (see below, for an excerpt).  Anyone is free to download and read this, also in the Archive, at http://www.archive.org/details/PioneersOfAlienismAnd50sSci-fiAtThingStreetAsylum, for a very different take on the production.  My approach is differnt too, to juxtapose fiction and history, past and present.  Troping the Asylum and The Support Worker can also be downloaded from the Internet Archive.  Please note, Lisa Brown, Sandra Shannon, et al., no use without permission AND ATTRIBUTION!