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Mental health in the theatre spotlights

  • 12 January 2023
Young adults open up about their mental health issues in Kopkreukels (‘head wrinkles’): a theatre performance that meanders between a soap scene about family relations and a dance about insomnia.
Mental health in the theatre spotlights
‘How are you’? It’s an everyday casual question for most, but not for some. Director Riff Eline Roozeboom from Live Your Story explains that ‘the question can be very confrontational. Because sometimes you are simply not doing well, for a moment, or a longer time.’ According to Roozeboom, mental health is a difficult subject, because it is invisible. Kopkreukels enables people to share their story in a creative way, thereby eliminating taboos and social isolation.

Kopkreukels is an initiative of HKU student Mike Schmit (from Theatre in Education) and director Riff Eline Roozeboom from Live Your Story. The video report below (with English subtitles) gives you a peek behind the scenes. The performances are from students of HKU Theatre and Musician 3.0, together with young adults who receive mental healthcare from Altrecht. The coming months, Kopkreukels will be performed for a select audience at mental health institutes and schools.