As common on neurology wards as MS, Functional Neurological Disorder looks and feels like a problem with the workings of the brain. Sufferers can experience tremors, seizures, blindness, paralysis – all with no physical cause.
With three actors and live music, Still Ill looks at the search for meaning that follows a difficult diagnosis – and how it feels to be told there’s nothing physically wrong with you when your brain is telling you you’re sick.
★★★★ ‘intricately-layered, exquisitely detailed … . It’s deeply sophisticated, sensitive stuff, with a strong Charlie Kaufman flavour and an aftertaste of Tim Crouch.’ Time Out
★★★★ ‘Fascinating, layered, intelligent’ The Stage
★★★★★ ‘Breathtaking stuff… an enormously affecting bit of theatre’ London City Nights
‘Oliver Sachs meets Adam Curtis’ Whatsonstage
★★★★ ‘Fresh and striking show from talent on the rise’ Evening Standard
‘brilliantly crafted, exacting, and endlessly inventive, Still Ill is a complex and meticulous journey into the world of undiagnosis ‘ Exeunt
Still Ill was developed throughout 2015 and 2016 through extensive research with FND sufferers, patient advocacy group and doctors. Kandinsky are particularly indebted to their principal medical adviser Dr Tim Nicholson, Neuropsychiatry Consultant at the South London & Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and NIHR clinician scientist at the Institute of Psychiatry Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London, for all his time, care and precision, and for supporting the show throughout its development and beyond.
Director: James Yeatman
Producer: Lauren Mooney
Cast: Sophie Steer, Hamish MacDougall, Harriet Webb
Composer: Zac Gvirtzman
Lighting design: Joshua Gadsby
AV design: Harry Yeatman
Stage manager: Maia Alvarez Stratford
Devised by the company with additional material by Al Smith and Joan Iyiola
Still Ill played at the New Diorama in November 2016 and January 2018.
This production’s initial run was supported in 2016 by Complicite, Unity Theatre Trust, Royal Victoria Hall Foundation, The Thistle Trust, the New Diorama Emerging Companies Fund and supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
The 2018 run was supported by the NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust & King’s College London.
