Writer and director by Aisling Smith introduces OCD Me, her play about living with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, which returns this June for performances in Dublin and Cork.
Growing up, I was taught the value of creative expression. My granddad, Sean Reid, was a celebrated traditional musician and so the arts held a privileged position in our house. Now, as a theatre-maker, I strive to create work that is socially engaged and aims to have a positive impact on audiences. Owing to this, writing a play about my OCD was something I felt I needed to do for a long time.
While some 100,000 to 150,000 people suffer from OCD in Ireland alone, it is very much a misunderstood and misrepresented condition that is often trivialized in popular culture. In writing OCD Me, I wanted to create a play that would give people a real insight into what it can be like to have the condition.
There is a vulnerability in creating autobiographical work; once you've put it out there, you can't take it back.
In 1933, FDR famously said "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." This is the kind of fear you experience with OCD and it can be debilitating.
With this fear come feelings of isolation, self-loathing and shame. You feel deathly ashamed for thinking the thoughts you are having and are repulsed at yourself for carrying out the rituals and compulsions you feel compelled to do.
For this reason, I have found a great feeling of power and achievement in laying-out the details of OCD and telling my story unabashedly in a fun way with costumes, music, and lights on stage.
But at the same time it has been terrifying. There is a vulnerability in creating autobiographical work; once you've put it out there, you can’t take it back.
After two years of writing the play - with the help of an Arts Council Theatre grant - actor Laura Whelan and I debuted OCD Me at the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe Festival last August. Before bringing the play to Edinburgh I had never met anyone else with OCD, but throughout the festival a number of people with the condition came to talk to me after the show.
I found their positive responses to the show extremely gratifying, their endorsement was everything.
Since then we have shown the play in The Civic Tallaght, The Galway Theatre Festival, and the dlr Mill Theatre in Dundrum. We are currently finalising a tour aimed at secondary school audiences around Ireland this Autumn.
I strongly believe that it is vital for us as a society to communally share our stories concerning mental health; to better understand and recognize the various kinds of mental health conditions and finally break-down the lingering stigma surrounding them.
OCD Me is at The New Theatre, Dublin, from Tuesday May 30th – Sat June, and Cork Arts Centre from June 28th - July 1st.
