Schanker
|
In an interesting twist of fate, an IUPUI professor's original play, based on a true story of patients at the former Central State Hospital for the Mentally Ill, premiered on a stage in what was once the hospital's laundry building.
Curtains rose May 6 on Beckman Theatre's production of David Schanker's Asylum. Showtime, through May 22, is 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, and 2:30 p.m. Sundays at the Central State Laundry Building, located west off Warman Avenue between Washington and Vermont streets in downtown Indianapolis.
The production is the first play to be presented at the building recently converted to a theater.
Asylum tells the story of a psychologist's struggle to save a group of chronic schizophrenic patients before Central State closed its doors in the early 1990s.
"The play deals with issues of art, madness and politics," Schanker said. "It tells the true story of the closing of Central State Hospital from the perspective of Dr. Jonathan Mangold, a psychologist/artist and Vietnam vet who attempted to keep Central State from closing by publicizing the artwork his patients had created in the art program he started there."
The art project had raised hopes that the hospital could be kept open as a place of refuge--of asylum--for those patients who could not survive outside the institution.
Schanker teaches creative writing and film studies at IUPUI.
Tickets are $15 for students and seniors; and $20 for all others. For tickets, call the Beckmann Theatre at 317-590-1454.
|
