Ruby Wax in Losing It at the Menier Chocolate Factory, London, in February. Photograph: Alastair Muir/Rex Features

Since 2004, the Menier Chocolate Factory has been a successful theatre, transferring productions to the West End and Broadway. But, this month, the theatre is being transformed for a different purpose altogether. It will become a part-time mental health drop-in centre.

It is all part of the return of Losing It, a two-woman show about mental health, written and performed by comic actor Ruby Wax and musician Judith Owen, which debuted at the venue earlier in the year following a successful tour around the country in theatres and mental health facilities.

As part of the new run, the Chocolate Factory is holding drop-in sessions, in conjunction with the charity Sane, for people seeking support with mental health issues.

Owen, a singer-songwriter, is looking forward to this new development, which she and Wax have been hoping for since the show’s inception. “We’re very excited – we wanted to be able to get psychiatrists and nurses and whoever it might be, so that people know where to phone, where to go online, where to get help. It’s about talking to people who understand.”

“People who feel they have mental [health] issues and their carers have nowhere to go to find help,” adds Wax. “We’re opening this forum so that people can meet fellow sufferers, get information on where they can go and what they can do.”

Each session is free and features a guest speaker from the field, followed by a question-and-answer panel with Wax, Owen, and Marjorie Wallace, the founder and chief executive of Sane, with charity staff on hand to discuss its services and to guide people towards potential resources around the country.

Wallace welcomes the opportunity to work with Wax and Owen in this way. “Staging this series of forums is a truly innovative idea that will allow everybody who is affected by or interested in mental health to take part in informative, frank and relaxed discussions,” she says. “This will be a chance for people to come together to learn more about therapies and treatments, and it is so important for professionals, carers and those who have been or who are affected by mental ill-health to share and talk openly about their experiences.”

Owen admits that the show itself may not be what everyone is expecting. “It’s a different theatrical experience,” she says. “We knew it would be a hard one to get across. It should leave you thinking about things. Whenever you go somewhere and you cry, or feel emotional, or you feel something other than sitting back and being entertained, that’s an intense experience. It encourages people to think about the subject matter long and hard afterwards. That’s what we’re seeking to do.”

• Losing It sessions will be held on 19 and 26 May and 2, 9 and 16 June, 2pm-4pm, at the Menier Chocolate Factory, London.

Read full Guardian Article online

Read full Losing It review

Wax’s aim is clearly to chart her own experience in the hope it can help others. She talks about her American upbringing, her sense of childhood isolation, her belief that fame could offer a vindictive triumph over circumstance. “I ended up on TV,” she tells us, “because I had the drive of a rottweiler.” But, having acquired the trappings of success, Wax found herself prey to an illness that left her in a state of paralysing inertia at a school sports day. A spell in the Priory was followed by a later “tsunami of a depression“, further treatment and her emergence into a state where she can talk freely about her condition.

Read Full Losing It review

With the entire run sold out before opening night, comedienne, interviewer and documentary maker Ruby Wax and singer-songwriter Judith Owen will be returning to the Menier Chocolate Factory with RUBY WAX-LOSING IT for a further five weeks from Tuesday 17^th May.

In this hilarious and sometimes dark show Ruby Wax, currently undertaking her Master’s at Oxford University,  discusses the toxins of our time – envy, fame, television, the insatiable drive to win, getting rich, getting the perfect body, marriage, kids, career and, above all, staying busy while looking like you’re having a nice day. This is why we all, at one point in our lives, feel like we’re about to go under or, in Ruby’s case, fall off a cliff.

This story is told with Wax’s distinctive wit, sharp observation and worldly wisdom, alongside Judith Owen’s poignant music, which serves as the emotional soundtrack to Wax’s words. Judith has been described by Jamie Cullum as “a female Randy Newman” and by The New York Times as having “the kind of folk-jazz voice that slices away surfaces to touch the vulnerable emotional nerve endings and leave you quivering”

RUBY WAX-LOSING IT is directed by Thea Sharrock and produced by Chocolate Factory Productions in conjunction with MJE Productions.

Each week will feature a guest speaker to come and talk with whatever size group attends and there will be an open forum discussion that will be used to disseminate info about various mental health resources.

Donations will be solicited on behalf of SANE.

The schedule will be as follows: each Thursday starting May 19th, May 26th, June 2nd, June 9th and June 16th.

Speakers include:

• Dr Mark Collins: 19th May
• Professor Lewis Wolpert: 26 May
• Professor Shitij Kapur: 2nd June
• Professor Mark Williams: 9th June
• Camila Batmanghelidjh: 16th June

She was the brash, bullying queen of comedy who made a career out of being rude. So who would be brave (or stupid) enough to share a stage with Ruby Wax?

The U.S. star’s new show, Ruby Wax: Losing It, is an account of the comedienne’s battle to admit and overcome bipolar disorder. It was meant to be serious, but Ruby says the script is the funniest she’s ever written.

And she’s right. Losing It is not only an irreverent look at her mental illness, but also an insight into superficial celebrity culture, charting her career, marriage, motherhood and, finally, the terrifying question of what next?

Read full article online here: Ruby Wax and Judith Owen – Losing It – Daily Mail
View full newspaper article click image below:

Wax says: 'I never buy albums; I don't like the pop charts at all'

Books: I’ve recently finished Jonathan Franzen’s fantastic novel, ‘Freedom’. Every sentence is so dark and to the heart of what is wrong with America. Celebrating dysfunctionality, as an expose of American psyche, it doesn’t just hit the nail on the head – it slams it into the ground and kills it.

Television: Having seen every episode at least three times, ‘House’ is my religion. I’m a true obsessive. Hugh Laurie is the most interesting character, he is just superb. I also love ’30 Rock’. I’ve never seen anyone write like that: not one minute goes by that’s not hilarious. Alec Baldwin is very sexy and this is definitely his best show ever. ‘Episodes’ is also pretty good, I love the head of comedy who never speaks; the way she smiles and sneers makes it look like she is going to be sick all the time.

Read Full Article – Cultural Life: Ruby Wax, comedian

10 February 2011 Last updated at 11:39

Losing It is on at the Menier Chocolate Factory, in London from Tuesday.

Watch BBC Breakfast interview here

Laughing matter: Ruby Wax says humour is essential for removing the stigma of mental illness. Her play Losing It opens next week.

You’re the wildebeest on the outside that’s going to get eaten first,” says Ruby Wax. “The moment you’re maimed mentally means you’re lunch. It’s totally primitive.” Wax is sitting in a smart west London restaurant discussing mental illness – and how the rules of the jungle still apply if you “crack up”.

The 57-year-old comedian has always been relatively open about her depression and treatment at the Priory clinic. But, she says, there is still huge stigma for sufferers like her – the one in four who experience “the dark side”.

“It used to be whether you were gay, then it was cancer,” says Wax.

“Once you couldn’t be a witch and now it’s if you have a flaw [of mental illness]. You’re not as resilient as the rest of the human race, definitely.”

Like all true performers, Wax, famed for her acerbic interviews with O J Simpson and Imelda Marcos, has taken life experience and turned it into theatre. Her play Losing It, also starring singer-songwriter Judith Owen, is vintage Wax, where nothing is taboo: psychiatric treatment, self-image, relationships and the shallowness of celebrity.

Her own spiral into depression began shortly after the birth of her youngest child Marina, now 16. At the time the comedian was desperate to disguise her “flaw” from everyone, including her closest friends.

“It felt totally shameful – that comes free with the package. Because you can’t see any lumps or tumours or skin conditions, people think you’re making it up. I whispered to a few producers and they’d understand. But I didn’t have a nine-to-five job so I could manage it. If you have to be at work, you’d have real trouble.”
The man who “saved” the comic was Dr Mark Collins, a lead psychiatrist at the Priory whose former patients are understood to have included Kate Moss and Princess Margaret.

Mood-stabilising drugs were a key part of the treatment, although it took time to find a combination that worked. “He knew how to make ‘cocktails’. He’s a psycho-pharmacist, he was a cardiologist, a nerve scientist … you can’t get better than that. He saved me.”

For the record, Wax has depression, not bipolar disorder, as has been asserted wrongly in past interviews. She is at the “vanilla” – mild – end of the mental health spectrum. “I’m extremely lucky,” she says.

Yet every five years she is vulnerable. The first sign of her depression is a dry mouth which, says Wax, is “always a surprise – like menstrual cramps. It feels like you took a drug. It’s physiological … once every five years a chemical kicks in. I don’t know how it starts, I don’t know where it begins. It could be something in my digestion.

“It’s not about just feeling sad. You don’t know whether to turn right or left. It’s a chemical imbalance, a brain disease. If you asked a diabetic what it feels like, it’s probably kind of similar.”

Losing It is not just about depression – that would be “too self-conscious”, says its creator. The essence of the play is this: everyone mistakenly believes there’s a manual for life. “We grow up thinking the next guy knows what he’s doing and as you get older you realise you’re the age now when you’re supposed to know something. And I know nothing. I’m the first one out of the closet.”

Finding your “tribe” is another insecurity at the heart of human existence that the play taps into. Watching the QVC channel or Strictly Come Dancing are both ways, says Wax, of trying to connect with others. She believes everyone, especially herself, is a “lost creature” trying to find commonality: “In America they all call the same hotline for the shopping channel. They all buy the watch.”

Wax says she will always be an “outsider looking in”. But she does now have her tribe – her family and the “one in four with mental illness. I feel more comfortable with people who have a quirk. I’m really at home with that. It’s when people are in denial that something’s not right that I can’t deal with it”. Through the BBC’s Headroom campaign, Wax interviewed patients suffering from mental health issues far worse than hers.

I ask her if she is uncomfortable with being the “poster girl” (her description) for mental illness. “It’s fine, it’s a job.” She still receives emails from people asking her to solve her problems. These are forwarded to trained counsellors. “There’s a responsibility involved and I’m not an expert. Get a professional,” she says.

Humour is essential for removing the stigma around mental health problems, according to Wax. Yet she disagrees with celebrities who claim depression has somehow been the making of them. “They’re kidding themselves. They’ve obviously never really been depressed. They’re just having a bad hair day.”

Losing It, from Tuesday 15th Feb to March 19 at the Menier Chocolate Factory. Info from menierchocolatefactory.com

View Full Article – Evening Standard

Ruby Wax 58

Wax (left) says: 'I told her I'd something wrong with me too. Sharing a disorder is the ultimate bond'

After studying psychology at university, Wax became known for her brash, unruly brand of humour as an actor, TV presenter and comedian. Her latest work is ‘Losing It’, a stand-up show focusing on her struggles with bipolar disorder. She lives in London with her husband and children

I’d been friends with Judith’s husband, [the actor] Harry [Shearer], since the 1980s, and when he told me he’d married her [in 1993], I wasn’t overly thrilled; I thought I’d have been a better catch. He must have brought her over to my house a number of times, but I blanked her.

Some years later, we were on a flight to New York, having both been at this glitzy party in Venice, and I was sat next to her. I’m terrified of flying, so I grabbed her hand as we were about to land and a conversation came out of that. She told me her mother killed herself and she had something wrong with her as well, so I told her I had something wrong with me; sharing a disorder is the ultimate bond.

After that our friendship was still connected to whenever Harry would come over to UK, as Judith would be there too, but my focus turned to her. She seemed to have so much more depth and her singing became magnificent to me. I’d make her sing “Smoke on the Water” over and over at parties, then she wrote a song for me. I’m famous for coming from a house of madness and the song was about somebody cutting through it all.

She gets the side of me that needs to break out of convention. We’ve formed this magnificent, ever-growing collection of people pictures, which makes me hysterical. Some years ago we started taking random shots of people and send them on to each other. Judith would take a picture of a fat woman peddling a bike whose seat you can’t see, while I would take snaps of grotesque-looking people at Wal-Mart, then get in the picture with them by telling them they looked like my cousin. Judith and I would look at each other and say, “We’re going to go to hell.”

For 10 years I’ve tried to write serious comedy about my experiences with depression. Losing It took a long time to figure out, but I knew Judith’s music would have the perfect tone – there’s a darkness there. It’s been cathartic for the both of us. I feel like there’s a blood connection between us now – no one loves me as much as she does.

Judith Owen 43

A critically acclaimed Welsh singer-songwriter, Owen’s soulful six-album body of work has led to her being described as a hip Norah Jones. She lives in London and LA with her husband, the ‘Spinal Tap’ and ‘Simpsons’ star Harry Shearer

My husband and Ruby had been friends since the early 1980s, and we’d go to her house for dinner parties. I was terribly intimidated, as she was the life and soul, though it makes me chuckle in hindsight, as we were both pretending. I doubt I spoke more than two words to her; I was too busy trying to mask the fact that I was very depressed at the time.

It all changed when we flew home from a party together. It was a hideous landing and as Ruby was a nervous flier she clutched my arm, screaming and crying. I was also scared but didn’t want to admit to her I thought I was going to die. When we landed, she said, “You’re so great for doing that.” I replied, “Anyone would have,” and she was, like, “Not just that, but being so cool about the fact Harry and I were once sexually and romantically involved.” It was the funniest moment as I’d never had a clue; my husband had been too scared to tell me. It was the true start of our relationship. She said, “Tell me something about yourself.” And as I’d been so terrified by the flight, everything poured out of me and I told her how I’d been struggling with depression. She recognised I was in a really bad place and just said, “You know what, me too.” I realised then that, with Ruby, I didn’t have to pretend any more.

Two years ago, sat in her kitchen, I was telling her how my shows were becoming more overtly about my illness. I said I wanted to go to hospitals and play there and Ruby told me how she’d had a show in mind for the past 10 years about her struggles with her breakdown, and we both thought, what if we could combine a comedy with music and something incredibly serious – mental illness.

She called her friend at the Priory and said “book us for a show” – eight months since she’d last been in there. We have struggled with clinical depression our whole lives, but when you see how bad it can get with other people, it quiets you inside. Now we’re performing to the general public, too, and we’ve found an awful lot to laugh about while touring. Ruby almost set one theatre on fire after leaving her coat over a hot lamp; that had us in stitches. The next day, the hotel we’d been staying at burnt to the ground. I don’t know many people who would find that as funny as Ruby and I did.

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‘Losing It’ is at the Menier Chocolate Factory, London SE1 (020 7907 7060, menierchocolatefactory.com), from 15 February to 19 March