A couple of years ago, the actor and choreographer Lanre Malaolu was creating a duet about mental health. “I was working with an amazing contortionist dancer,” he remembers. “But for various reasons she had to drop out … I didn’t have time to get anyone else.” He swears under his breath and smiles, before explaining how he sat in his living room and tried to come up with a quick solo performance. “I was like, ‘What’s one of the challenges that I’ve experienced with anxiety, depression? Getting out of bed.’”
The scene Malaolu made “was almost verging on clownish. I was using physical theatre and hip-hop movement to show this guy just wanting to get up.” The performance went down a storm. “People were really affected by it, and were like, ‘You need to tour this around.’ I was like, ‘It’s only 15 minutes!’ But that got me thinking.” Malaolu has expanded that single scene into a full-length show, Elephant in the Room, which now has a three-week run at Camden People’s theatre in London.
“Basically, it’s about a young man’s challenges with his mental health,” he says. “But also how he interacts with different characters that he’s grown up with, and how they influence his perception [of his mental wellbeing].” The piece mixes dance, theatre and spoken word, with Malaolu playing the mostly silent protagonist Michael and the other characters.
Conversations about mental health have become more visible, with the likes of Zayn Malik and Prince Harry openly discussing their struggles. There has been a rise, too, in theatrical work on the subject such as Milly Thomas’s Dust, a look at one young woman’s suicide, and I’m a Phoenix, Bitch, in which performance artist Bryony Kimmings looked at her trauma-related breakdown. Masculinity and the mental health of young men are considered in Barber Shop Chronicles, which is coming to the Roundhouse, London, after two National Theatre runs and an international tour, and Fledgling Theatre’s Neck or Nothing, which is at the Pleasance theatre, London, this month, in partnership with men’s suicide prevention charity Calm.
Malaolu has explored similar issues in his work before. Growing up on an estate in pre-gentrification Hackney Wick, he trained as an actor at Drama Centre London before taking a role in Anthony Nielson’s Marat/Sade, set in an asylum, for the RSC in 2011. Recently Malaolu worked as movement director for Birmingham Rep’s revival of Joe Penhall’s Blue/Orange, a dissection of institutional racism and mental health. He has also been developing his BFI-supported short film The Circle, about a pair of teenage twin brothers and the stigmas they face in the inner city.
Malaolu’s interest in the topic comes from a straightforward place: “I guess I looked at myself.” He adds: “I’m not saying I’m the spokesperson for working-class black mental health. I don’t want to say that. But [Elephant in the Room] is from the perspective of a working-class black man, where things like race and class come into play.” In what way? “When you think of mental health, or when you think of having to change the way you act in public …” Malaolu trails off, before listing things such as people crossing the road to avoid young black men, and the effects of violent crime on working-class boys. He sighs. “How does that affect you if that stuff happens every day? [The show] is just dissecting that, looking and challenging that, but also putting a mirror up and saying, “Well, look. This is the shit it’s contributing to, you know?” He pauses. “Any time I hear that suicide is the biggest killer of males under 45 in the UK, I always go, ‘What the fuck?’”
Malaolu’s voice betrays only a hint of apprehension when he acknowledges that a three-week run of a solo show about depression promises to be demanding. Still, he’s clearly excited to present the finished project, and it’s easy to be swept up in his enthusiasm. There’s only one thing he won’t answer: why is the play called Elephant in the Room? Malaolu grins. “Great question. Come see it.”
Why should people come see it? He thinks for a minute. “I was getting a sports massage the other day, trying to prep my body,” he says, and explains that he and the masseur started talking about the show. “I said it’s about my experience with mental health within the black male community, and he was like, ‘Oh. That’s really good. I’ve had my own battle with depression.’ We spoke, and he started talking about how he had suicide attempts and stuff. We had a conversation, and by the end of it he was like, ‘Man, that’s like the first time that I could just talk with another guy about it and not feel weird.’ And I just paused. In my head, I went, ‘Yeah. This is it. Just having a conversation.’ That’s one of the things I’ll be happy with. Everyone just talking, you know?”
• Elephant in the Room is at Camden People’s theatre, London, 2-20 April.
