St Dymphna - patron saint of the Criminally Insane

Have just been finding out about St Dymphna as in Airswimming, Dora and Persephone are insititutionalised in St. Dymphna's Hospital for the Criminially Insane. Thought maybe she was made up but apparently not...and there is also a St. Dymphna's Physchiatric Hospital in Ireland. St. Dymphna is the patron saint of those who suffer from mental illness.

She was born in Ireland, where her father was a king and her mother died when Dymphna was in her teens. Struck by grief and mental illness, her father made sexual advances towards her. She fled to Belgium but her father tracked her down and begged her to return to Ireland where he decapitated her. Gruesome!

I first read this play years ago; Dora and Persephone were insitutionalised in the 1920's and I still find it hard to imagine how that must feel - to be taken from your home and family in your early twenties and locked away in a mental hospital for 50 years. How to relate to that one is going to be one mammouth challenge. I feel like climbing the walls when I spend more than a day in my flat, so maybe that's a start but after that length of time in the same place...how could you remain even slightly sane?

Website nightmare

I would consider myself pretty good at internet based stuff these days. I am not a techy, but I buy domain names and know how to use them!! I have created websites using the now advertised easy web creation tools. I just bought a website to use for our show from one.com. First time I have used them. Big problem - none of their easy to use software or templates are Mac compatible. Now - wouldn't you think they would point that out on their website? They do point out that you need Internet Explorer 6-8 - which even if I had seen that, I wouldn't have known it meant Mac was a no no. Argh.......An easy to create website has just not been that easy and wasted a load of my time. I have asked for my money back. Shame - the template I was looking at would have been perfect....back to the drawing board.

1972 Newspaper Article

The picture shows St Catherine's Hospital.

Found this newspaper article on the two women. Their real names were Lucy Baker and Annie Kitson. Their release from St Catherine's Hospital for the mentally handicapped near Doncaster, Yorkshire caused quite a stir as it became apparent that they were not the only ones who had been sent to mental institutions for reasons other than mental illness.

Line learning

Right. Time to learn some more of Dora's lines. Always the first thing I do, but it often takes a bit of will power to get going. It's mid-morning on a dreary Saturday in Clapham Junction. Just had coffee with my husband at our local Cafe Nero's (best of the chain coffee houses) where we were duly invaded by armies of screaming children. In the intro to her Plays:1, Charlotte Jones says that a line she read in a book inspired her to write Airswimming. "A Miss Kitson and a Miss Baker were placed in a Hospital for the Criminally Insane in the 1920s for bearing illegitimate children and not released until the 1970s." Wonder if I can work out what book that was. Isn't the internet amazing. Great for all sorts of things - particularly time wasting!!

First time Blogger!

Bit nervous of this blogging thing. Giving it a go though as Ellen and I had a great meeting today in Ludgate Circus with our director Brenden and his missus and our wonderful PR man Tim and they all thought it was a great idea. We will surely see!

Ellen and I are producing and appearing as Persephone and Dora respectively in a production of Airswimming by Charlotte Jones at the Hen & Chickens on 4th May for a three week run. Charlotte was a struggling actor when she wrote the play. I know how she felt! It is fabulous to create something yourself, that's yours from scratch.

Anyway - first time blog ever......phew....at least that is out of the way now.
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