theconversation.com: Earlier this month, Colorado voters approved a ballot that made it the fifth state to legalise physician-assisted suicide (excluding Montana, which allows it via court ruling). Discussions around this issue are understandably fraught.
At a time when legalisation is becoming more common, it’s now even more important that we consider how the debate around assisted dying is framed.
10 comments:
Now this is the kind of new musical I've been looking for. The image that headlines the article is particularly striking: Two hospital workers opening the doors for a woman holding golden balloons that spell out exit. A picture of suicide that is not negative or positive, just one that shows that for some, not living is really the best option. I can understand why it isn't quite legal yet; assisted suicide, is, to people that think of things in a binary fashion, just giving doctors the right to murder people. However, I believe that if your quality of life is so harsh, so painful that suicide is your best route, I think you have the right to make that choice and go about it in the safest, least painful way possible. Now, the musical doesn't seem to promote it, with it's creator using the debates as ways to satirize the issue, and I understand that there are problems with disabled people in media being depicted as depressed and leading sad lives, but I think that's a problem with fiction as a whole, not necessarily the specific assisted suicide debate. I don't know if the musical will answer the question, but as long as more people start to have discussions about it and evaluate the pros and cons, I'm all for the exposure.
It’s really nice to see an article on the green page that shows a challenging piece of theatre that doesn’t directly deal with the results of the election. I’d definitely go see this musical, as it seems to have just the type of disjunction between the format and the message that I find really interesting and engaging. It clearly deals with a touchy subject to many in a way that is both light hearted and deathly serious, and I respect that this musical understands that you can be both at the same time, and that decisions aren’t quite as clear cut as one might want them to be. While I personally think that one’s right to peruse happiness may be able to be extended into the territory of suicide, it’s complicated by the fact that your life also belongs in a way to those that are close to you. Someone may want to die, but that might be selfish of them, as they’d cause their loved ones’ unnecessary pain. But at the same time, you could just as easily flip the argument around and say that a group of people have no right to dictate the decisions of another person. I guess what I mean to say is that it’s nice to see something that challenges the notion that a decision as complex as this is has a binary right/wrong answer.
I think that people, if they so choose, be allowed access to assisted suicide if and only if they are really capable of making that decision with a full knowledge and a clear conscious. So the questions for me is, are people capable of making that decision, or is there some affecting bias that makes the whole practice illegitimate. The article raised the question of people with disabilities requesting assisted suicide, if I can make some distinctions people with mental disabilities are a more complicated subject, and it feels less acceptable for mentally disabled people to have access to that, on the other hand, metal disabilities are certainly worse a psychological sense than many physical disabilities. Without being able to say what any other specific person should do, my thoughts on the matter are that if I was disabled tomorrow, beyond any hope of recovery, such that I could not do any of the things that I enjoy about my life, I would request it. I do not want to be a vegetable. DRN. If I can still read and think though, no, I would want to live, life is still living even with just that.
Wow this certainly looks like it would be quite the tear jerker. Unless it is more dark comedy centered? I couldn't really tell. I really like musicals that are developed and focused around real-world issues. One of the greatest musicals I think I've ever seen was an MFA Thesis production about Cancer. Sort of a musical version of Margaret Edson's Pulitzer Prize Winning One-Act, "Wit." I thought it was real and charged and a very great exploration of issues related to cancer patients, such as medial malpractice and charged doctors who are interested in research. I think "Assisted Suicide: A Musical" would be a similar interesting exploration of an issue that no one is comfortable discussing. One of the biggest things I appreciate about theatre is that we are what people can look to to find interesting explorations of ideas that we aren't really talking about yet as a society or that we are talking about but perhaps aren't saying the right things.
It is interesting to see the different ways that the performing arts through theatre and film portray the heavy topic of assisted suicide. What makes Liz Carr's piece, Assisted Suicide: a Musical so unique is it's depiction of disability and the issues that surround the act of assisted suicide. By using the means of musical theatre through a comedic lens helps to alleviate the common trope of the person victimized because of their disability. This directly counteracts the movies like Me Before You that were mentioned in the article who advocate that the only "solution" to a life of disability is no life at all. However, theatre and film as a medium of the performing arts are subject to their freedom of speech as it's on art form. And it is also this freedom of speech through performance that allows for us to see the different opinions and view points of others.
As a strong proponent of legalizing assisted suicide, I am glad to see it being talked out more often in society and in the arts. Although it is a controversial and tender topic for many, I believe that Carr's piece will encourage others to think and discuss what our rights are as human beings as well as the beneficial and detrimental effects of assisted suicide. Her musical can also hopefully encourage people to be comfortable discussing mental and physical disabilities and how people effected by these disabilities choose to live. As always, I am glad to be in a field where touchy subjects can be fully fleshed out onstage AND can make people uncomfortable. Once we learn to address subjects as these, as uncomfortable as it may be to some, we can begin helping others understand as well as make a safer and healthier environment for people involved in the subject.
The interview clip with Liz Carr cracks me up. One cannot help being really in awe for her, a disabled activist and comedian, who expresses her opposition to assisted suicide in the most fantastic way possible – producing a musical. Liz Carr is one of many people with disability that do not fit the media’s depiction: leading a miserable life, wanting to end their lives, living is more painful than being dead, etc. They live a wonderful, colorful, blissful life and they will fight everything they have to defend their happy existence. As a person with intact and functional body parts, I can never say I fully understand what they’ve been through and how they should face every day of their life, nor should I. But I do understand the feeling of being represented by something you don’t agree with. I feel like part of the reason why Liz Carr decides to make a musical that draws her own life experience is that there are so many movies that fantasize and romanticize euthanasia and feeds the stereotypes created by the mainstream media. This is the situation where if you don’t speak up, others will speak for you. No matter where one stands on this thorny controversial topic, one can see that theatre is not a comfort zone place with happy safe fairy tales. It presents conflicts, challenges. It provides you platform to express your foresights and insights. It makes you sit on the edge of your chair and it will continue to do so.
I still haven't quite figured out where I stand on the issue of assisted suicide, but I definitely did not expect the musical in this article to be against it. In my recent memory it has been rare for a piece of musical theater to provoke questions by satirizing the issue as a way to work against it. That said, I think it is a great way to engage people and get them to think about a complex issue. Carr's interview about the piece makes it seem a little campy, but sometimes camp is a good way to get people to digest a complex idea, so I don't think she can be faulted for that. Ultimately I think I would be interested in seeing the piece as a way to become better educated about the issue for the future.
A friend of mines mother died a few years ago and she wanted to die months maybe even a year before her body finally gave out. Her father now works very hard to pass laws that would allow people to choose when they want to die if they have a terminal illness. I don't know how I feel about it, I see both sides. I think if the laws did get passes that allowed assisted suicide we would have to very specifically regulate how that law is used and how sick a person has to be before we enact the law. I also think we would have to very heavily consider mental illness in talking about this and how we gage that. Because that illness is much more a spectrum it is hard to understand how sick someone actually is. There are a lot of factors that I haven't quite made my mind up on, and I imagine most of the world is like me because we haven't been having this discussion as a culture for a vey long time. I think much like every other difficult topic bringing something to the theater is a good way to start the conversation, and although everyone may not agree with you at least they are having the conversation. I look forward to seeing how the topic and my feelings develop over the next few years, and how much people bring it into their own work.
I think it was very important that a musical was written about this upcoming issue. People are beginning to become more passionate about it and are starting to form rock solid opinions, and that is when shows are best to be written. I am still trying to find my position on the matter, because it is truly something that cannot be undone. I also do like that this show shows that people with disabilities can live happy and somewhat normal lives. I think many people forget that they do have feelings, something that I have realized through working with students with a variety of disabilities on a huge scale. I applaud any show automatically that uses actors with disabilities, because it helps people think of them more as people just like themselves. Assisted Suicide sounds like a show that would make people question their views on the matter, and maybe walk out understanding the other side as well. I am not one to say yes to assisted suicide, but I also think it is better if someone has talked a person through it and if it is done in the least painful of ways. It is an issue that many people are extremely passionate about, and I am glad a show was written at this time where it is starting to become legal in more states. I think this issue will become a forefront issue in the next four years.
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