Introduction: Locating Madness and Performance

Abstract

In October 2013, as we compose this introduction, two news stories emerge that strike at the heart of this study. Asda, Tesco and Amazon have been forced to withdraw their fancy dress costumes — ‘Mental Patient’ and ‘Psycho Ward’ — following extensive complaints regarding the stigmatising nature of the costumes. The outfits comprised a blood stained, ripped white shirt, with machete accessory to ‘complete the look’ (‘Mental Patient’), and an orange boiler suit with ‘Psycho Ward’ on the chest and ‘Committed’ on the back accessorised with a Hannibal Lecter-esque face mask and over-size syringe (‘Psycho Ward’). After with drawing the costumes, Asda rapidly made what it described as a ‘size able’ donation to Mind.¹ Shortly after this Thorpe Park, a theme park in Surrey, received a barrage of criticism for its ‘Fright Night’ experience set inside a ‘psychiatric asylum’. Visitors can pay to go inside a series of mazes at night for an experience along the lines of the old-fashioned haunted houses that used to populate amusement parks, seafronts and fairs. The most popular maze is called ‘The Asylum’ and features actors dressed as ‘lunatics’, that is in straitjackets covered in blood and with ghoulish painted faces. These actors then chase visitors around the mocked-up asylum with chainsaws and other weapons.