The symposium  is a chance to talk about the mental health of young people, the people that work with them and how the arts can support their well-being.

This play looks at a classroom of characters including a student struggling with his emotions and self-injuring, and a teacher struggling to keep going, with the help of food.

Mind Your Head Symposium is from 9.30-4.30 at MAC, Cannon Hill Park, Birmingham B12 9QH.

For tickets call 0121 236 4455 or email tickets@birmingham-rep.co.uk

Tue 11 & Wed 12 Oct, 7.30pm

A double bill of Other and Unsent Letters at the Drum
www.the-drum.org.uk

Unsent Letters is a one woman show which tells the story of Peggy and her son Bradley.

Peggy runs into trouble and starts to experience mental ill health in her early twenties and is sectioned and detained under the Mental Health Act in a medium secure mental health unit. Her beloved son Bradley is taken into foster care at the age of seven, and, from there, put up for adoption. The terms of the adoption allow her to write to him every year on his birthday, which she does , although she knows they will turn out to be unsendable and she’ll only be able to send him cards. The play takes the form of those letters.

Written and directed by Polly Wright, Artistic Director of the Hearth Centre.
£8 (£6)

OTHER by Lorna Laidlaw

From the outset, everyone thought that Tobias was a good boy with a positive future ahead of him: his friends; his Primary School teachers- and most of all his Mum, Caroline. But by the time he reaches adulthood he has been arrested, sectioned and treated in a medium secure mental health unit. What went wrong? Other traces Tobias’s life in reverse, from his arrest and sectioning back through to his childhood. A fascinating and intensely moving performance, highlighting the missed opportunities for intervention in Tobias’s life. The play asks whether it needs to be like this for young people of dual heritage?

Written by Lorna Laidlaw, local writer, TV actress and director of the sell-out show Mr Soon Come.
Directed by Ali Belbin

Please click here for the flyer for Other and Unsent Letters >>

Both Other and Unsent Letters are produced at the Drum in association with the Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust.

Match

In the SHOUT LGBT Festival 2011
http://www.shoutfestival.co.uk/Theatre/Match/53

Nov 10-12th at St Paul’s Church, St Paul’s Square B3

Jasmin and Helen have been together for a few years now- and everyone says they’re the perfect couple. Neither of them are able to have kids naturally, so they adopt a child. The adoption is going well- though not at all as they expected. When Jasmin starts to get a little too friendly with the child’s “birth” aunt- the cradle starts rocking.

This hard hitting, but compassionate play sensitively explores the joys and challenges of lesbian adoption.

Written by the Artistic Director of Hearth Polly Wright
Directed by Jenny Stephens.