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three students intently listening to lecturer
Brighton & Sussex Medical School

Ethics in Performance - 2011/12 series

Dementia Diaries

an image from the dementia diaries, showing a distorted face screamingDementia Diaries

19 October 2011

7.30 pm

Sallis Benney Theatre

Lewes Live Literature present: Dementia Diaries

BSMS hosted a moving literary drama on the impact of dementia, followed by panel discussion bringing together the playwright and experts in the field.

Written by Maria Jastrzebska
Directed by Mark C. Hewitt for LLL Productions
Incidental music for flute and cello by Peter Copley

Told through the interweaving monologues of an Anglo-Polish family and their Polish carer, Dementia Diaries explores the troubled relationships within a family struggling to cope with dementia.

Developed with input from clinicians and nurses based at the Memory Assessment and Research Centre in Southampton and returning to Sussex after touring nationally, this acclaimed drama for five voices and live music combines tenderness and despair with moments of surreal humour and occasional strong language.

BACKGROUND IMAGE FOR PANEL

"What a great play! It was great to see such an accurate portrayal of the stresses that can develop when someone is living with dementia, conveying the complex feelings and emotions involved."

Lisa Gatward (Alzheimers UK)

 

"Dementia Diaries was marvellous - I would recommend it -touching, sad, funny and thought provoking. Brilliant script, direction and acting. Absolutely fantastic, I am so impressed."

Audience member

 

"Dementia has protean manifestations affecting sufferers and carers very differently. This play wonderfully portrays how our own circumstances and fears for the future interact with our personal relationship with the sufferer. Through the use of multiple monologues it emphasised through sensitive and realistic performances the many levels that this disease inhabits us not just as patient but as family and professional and non-professional carers"

Dr David Wilkinson (Consultant in Old Age Psychiatry, Memory Assessment and Research Centre, Southampton)