Program Note

Prescribed Disbelief is an improvisatory graphic score that was written in response to Naomi Deyell’s art exhibit Hysteria. This poignant exhibit explores the systemic neglect of women’s mental health in medical research and the real-world consequences of this fact, using the pit bull as a metaphor to depict how women with mental health concerns are often misunderstood and villainized.

Prescribed Disbelief explores an interconnected branch of this topic, commenting on the intrinsic link between an individual’s mental and physical health, and how the systemic neglect of both areas, as it pertains women and feminine presenting individuals, is detrimental to one’s overall well-being and sense of self. Historically, women’s pain has been disproportionately ignored and dismissed in healthcare communities: These biases lead women to disconnect from their bodies and ultimately come to doubt their perception of their own physical experiences, losing both their voice and self-belief in the process.

Prescribed Disbelief depicts this concept, the journey of a women navigating our biased healthcare system and ultimately being overlooked and influenced to question her own experience of pain, and by extension, her perception of everything. The ensemble is improvising based on a watercolour graphic score, with elements of text. The text spoken throughout the piece is based on quotes directly from medical professionals that have been said to me or other women in my life who were in the process of seeking medical care for complex and misunderstood mental and/or physical health conditions.