Life on the Pharm

NOVEMBER 9, 10, 11

Location: Pamplin 30 (VT Campus)

8pm

As a complement to this year's Choices and Challenges forum, we are sponsoring a performance piece that explores the complexity of issues surrounding antidepressants. The piece, Kierkegaard's Cure or Life on the Pharm, will be performed at 8pm on the Wednesday before, the Thursday of, and the Friday after this year's forum.

Kierkegaard's Cure or Life on the Pharm, written and conceptualized by Brandiff Caron, Bep Cooper, and Ann Kilkelly, features a unique blend of interactive theater and story telling. An audience member can expect to be made a part of the story and, should they choose, even take part in the dialogue at certain points throughout the piece.

The piece's main characters include the great existentialist philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, Dr. Smith, an experienced physician, and, most importantly, YOU the audience. In an attempt to map out the terrain in order to better navigate around the competing modes of understanding in the antidepressant debate, the piece attempts to present the modes (including cognitive therapy, post-modernity, methods of prescription, the role of big business, etc.) in a way that foregrounds some of the basic insights in each in an effort to spawn a more informed dialogue between these competing ways of understanding the debate surrounding antidepressants.