Description

Topic: Mental Illness
Reading: Snap! by Regi Carpenter\
Collaborating Partner: Seacoast Mental Health
Event Sponsor: Exeter Hospital

The second event in New Hampshire Theatre Project’s provocative new Elephant-in-the-Room Series of playreadings and community discussion will focus on the topic of Mental Illness, featuring a performance of Snap! by guest artist Regi Carpenter. Regi has toured her solo shows and workshops in theaters, festivals and schools, nationally and internationally.  She is the recipient of many awards, including Storytelling World, Parent’s Choice, and Parents’ Guide to Children’s Media Award. Her stories have been featured on Sirius Radio, Apple Seed Radio, The Moth, and NPR.   Snap! is a winner of the Boston StorySlam.
 
Snap! is the story of a sixteen-year-old girl’s descent into mental illness, her commitment to a state mental hospital and her journey back to reality and freedom.  Personal admission of hospitalization is still covered in secrecy, rarely treated as directly and honestly as it is in Snap!  Yet Carpenter doesn’t think of herself as courageous to share her personal experience of recovery.  “My challenge was how to bring this story to others in a way that allowed them to find their own story in mine,” she explains.  The show uses music, gesture and humor to put audiences into the experience as well as to facilitate a deeper understanding of mental health challenges.  As she created the story, Carpenter learned that the past doesn’t control us.  “What I can see in my experience now is a deeply troubled teen who could no longer cope and who received love, care and hope in the darkest place.”