InsideOut Circus and Physical Theatre Company took the audience on an extraordinary, unexpected tour of the human mind on Saturday night during the sold-out finale performance of Mind Unravelled.

Arriving at Riverside Community and Cultural Centre in Lower Moutere on Saturday evening, you could be forgiven for expecting to hand over your ticket, enter a room filled with chairs, and sit facing a stage, waiting for the action to occur. In this vision of theatre consumption, there is an invisible “fourth wall” between the stage and the audience. The actors perform, the audience watches. On Saturday night, InsideOut tore this wall down.

Upon arrival at Riverside, ticket holders immediately become part of the performance. Lab coat wearing ‘scientists’ wielding clipboards welcome us ‘corporate sponsors’ to a tour of The Ministry of The Mind. As we tour the facility, it becomes disturbingly clear that, as corporate sponsors, we are complicit in the treatment of the human test subjects. As we watch, dull-eyed ‘mental health patients’, tattooed across their lower backs with the Ministry’s logo, endure strange and possibly painful treatments. It is impossible not to feel somehow responsible for what is happening.

After we, the corporate sponsors, were invited to “take the blue pill”, a captivating, sometimes hilarious, often moving, tour of the human mind commenced, revealing the myriad ways in which our mind can attempt to trip us up and tie us in knots.

Mind Unraveled is a potent invitation to consider how we think about mental health, and the way in which mental health is treated in our medical system. That Mind Unraveled is able to convey the complexities of neuroscience, psychology and mental health using a mind-bending combination of tightly choreographed physical theatre, spoken word, aerial silks, lighting, music and audience participation is a testament to the world-class skill of InsideOut Director Damara Sylvester and her crew of talented physical theatre practitioners.

Damara Sylvester says, as Mind Unraveled is site specific – choreographed specifically to be performed at the Riverside Community and Cultural Centre – that InsideOut is open to adapting the production. Let’s hope other appropriate venues around New Zealand can be found, as this is one show that everyone needs to see. 

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer