Jocelyn Pook's Hearing Voices

Hearing Voices, Jocelyn Pook's remarkable work examining changing perceptions to mental illness, is being revived at the Print Room at the Coronet, Notting Hill from 12 to 15 July 2017. Directed by Emma Bernard with lighting by Chahine Yavroyan, the piece will be performed by Melanie Pappenheim (soprano), Susi Evans (clarinet), Preetha Narayan (violin), Jocelyn Pook (viola) and Laura Moody (cello). The performances will be accompanied by art installations by Dragan Aleksic.

Inspired by Gail Hornstein's 2009 book Agnes's Jacket: A Psychologist's Search for the Meanings of Madness, Hearing Voices focuses on five moving stories - Jocelyn Pook's mother, her great aunt, the seamstress Agnes Richter and artists Julie McNamara and Bobby Baker.  Pook's great aunt spent 25 years in an asylum, possibly to save her family the embarrassment of her re-entering society and Pook's mother wrote a novel about her own breakdown and horrific medical treatment. Through these and the other stories, the piece looks at the changing perceptions of mental illness – hysteria, madness, dementia, psychological disturbance - through the bewilderment, embarrassment and stigma associated with it.

Hearing Voices was commissioned by BBC Radio 3 and premiered at the Southbank Centre in 2012, and was most recently revived at Tête à Tête Opera Festival in 2015

Full details from the Print Room website.