The Nov. 16 editorial "A real-life drama at the Guthrie" surprisingly labeled the woman who disrupted the opening of a play by 30 minutes as "a patron in distress," "disturbed," "a woman in crisis." The piece shamed audience members for reacting negatively while lovingly calling out one "kindly" audience member who implored people to have compassion.
Meanwhile, the editorial benefited from making a clever analogy between the woman's behavior, the audience reaction and the play itself. I wonder if the same adjectives would have been used had the woman been a man? I doubt it. Or if the patron had thrown more than a program? Not so sure.
Regardless, the villain is not the terrible audience members. The Guthrie Theater is at fault for allowing the scene to continue for 30 minutes before the woman was escorted out. This was a disservice to the children in the audience, the other patrons and the theater company while creating news and an editorial for the Star Tribune.
Christine Bray, Minneapolis
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"A real-life drama at the Guthrie" drove home the paucity of compassion and understanding out there for mental illness. Between the jeering audience and the article comments questioning the use of the word "crisis," everyone seemed willing to presume the sufferer was simply acting badly. But to me, the situation described in the editorial seems to have all the earmarks of a true mental-health crisis. And in that case, the health crisis was no different from any other, and jeering and ridicule would register about the same with the victim as if one were jeering at a heart-attack victim. The person in the mental health crisis cannot really make the connection between their behavior and the reaction to it. They are hearing and reacting to other voices.
For anyone with a loved one suffering from mental illness, the incident looks just like the tip of the iceberg. As a family you try to simply work within the reality the disease imposes. The sufferer is an adult with rights, just like everyone else. But their needs can be overwhelming. So you might have a couple of family members who are responsible for her house cleaning, another who goes shopping, another who monitors medications and goes to appointments, another who schedules activities, and some who just are good listeners.
And everyone tries to do their part, knowing that it is all just provisional until the next incident. The expensive ambulance ride, the police and paramedics, a few nights in hospital lockdown. Not to mention the continuous abuse she is capable of dishing out. And your friends telling you how this could all be avoided if you simply [fill in the blank]. You consider any day where she seems safe and happy to be a good day. But you harbor a guilty hope she will cross the line sometime and somebody in authority will have to step in. For my family, the resolution came through a compassionate nursing home. She is safe, but miserable. She feels trapped and pines for her old life. Unlike bad behavior, mental illness seldom has a happy ending.