We’ve come a long way with how we address mental health.  As a society, we are listening more, allowing ourselves to open up and working to find more resources to provide for those in need.  

 

Why, then, are many still suffering in silence?

 

For all of the progress being made, a sense of safety has still not been established enough for the stigma on mental illness to disappear.

 

The birth of this play originated with knowing that the trauma I went through, coupled with my own mental health struggles, feel just as prevalent today as when I experienced it for the first time in 1996.

 

Deciding to close out the memory trilogy with Duality, I asked myself how I wanted this chapter to end.  

 

In The Girl with the Red Hair, people were moved by Hayley’s journey, found themselves relating to the problems with the system.  In Shadows, audiences were effected by the love story and the tenderness in which we handled it.  I knew that I wanted Duality to speak on memory in a way that felt unique to these characters.

 

After getting feedback on the workshop draft of the play, I realized that, more than any other work I’ve written, readers were really connecting to these characters as if they knew them.  They were thinking about them when the play was over and concerned for them.  It showed me that we were tapping into something that needed to be spoken about.

 

The theme I was excited to explore through each character was loneliness and the different ways it manifests.  The play deals with several different topics, including the choice to die, teenage pregnancy, sexual awakening and young divorce.  They all felt necessary to include to watch these journeys unfold and understand that loneliness lives in all of us, even those who claims it doesn’t.

 

My own experiences with loneliness and coming to terms with the abuse of my childhood brought me very close to Camilla’s decision many times.  There was a worthlessness that would continue to sneak up and somehow remind me that it was my fault and that I wasn’t worthy of the people around me.  This was a lie and it took me many years to realize how big of a lie it was.  Sometimes I look back and can’t believe I made it out.  “The darkness, sometimes, it can feel overwhelming” is something I still fight through.

 

This is why I wrote Duality.  For us, as a collective, to understand that what happens in our head is not always true.

 

I’ve come to realize, as opposed to what I felt back in ’96, that we are not alone.  We share a connection with everyone around us.  That connection also includes sharing darkness.  It may not always be the same darkness, but by listening, we understand our deepest gift with each other is our ability and determination to survive.

 

I hope this play opens up conversations about the extremes that mental illness can have on the mind.  I hope it informs people that it isn’t something you can just snap out of.  Mostly, I hope this play makes us understand that within in each of us is someone in need of compassion.

 

Anthony M. Laura

July 7, 2024

Brooklyn, NY

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