You can listen to Episode 5 here!
'Which Tree Were You at Drama School?' | Processing Trauma through Comedy with Mouncealot – The Invisible Cabaret Podcast: Mental Health & The Arts
Episode 5 of #InvisiblePodcast brings you an interview with London-based actor and our ‘resident clown’, Kate Mounce, AKA Mouncealot. Ferrero Rochelle and Rosie Verbose enjoy a fun and meaningful chat around the subject of mental health and the art of clowning. Firstly, what is C-PTSD? Is that different to BPD? Is there a difference between laughing at vs. laughing with? What about trauma and its effects on the body? How on earth do you navigate vulnerability in performance, and making work that comes from your deepest, raw self? In this, we will tackle all of the above. All in about half an hour. Who says we’re not having a productive quarantine?
You can find Mouncealot online at @mouncealot83 and via her theatre company, Beside Ourselves Collective (@besideourselves on Instagram and TikTok).
Things mentioned in the podcast:
- Beside Ourselves Collective (see above) – devised theatre collaboration between LISPA trained Kate Mounce and Fourth Monkey graduate Eleanor Young.
- C-PTSD (Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder): the Mind website has a useful starting point for understanding and getting support
- BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder)
- LISPA (now arthaus.berlin)
- École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques LeCoq
- Recommended reading: ‘Waking the Tiger’ by Peter Levine (about somatic experiencing and psychological trauma).
If you enjoyed this episode, you might like to hear more about the subject of trauma. As such, you might like our episode about trauma therapy and art with illustrator Elyssa Rider. If you’d like more conversation about BPD, check out our episodes with Lucy Dickson and Victoria Rose!
Be in the next episode of #InvisiblePodcast! Tweet or DM us with what you’re grateful for this week, or – better still – send us a voice message!
With thanks to: Matt Ennis, www.mennismixing.co.uk
Music: Shades of Spring by Kevin MacLeod, available under license: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Never miss an episode from Invisible Cabaret!
We release our #InvisiblePodcast about mental health and creativity every other Friday.
Subscribe wherever you enjoy podcasts:
[With C-PTSD, I experienced] this temporary loss of control, and lots of trauma experts talk about this: the body needs to release the chemicals that get stored during traumatic events and so what happens, particularly to animals in the wild, is they will shake after a traumatic event. There’s something around that, I think, in what can happen to a person when they have a deeply repressed experience of something traumatic. So the piece is very much an attempt to kind of externalise that experience, and I think really, it took me roughly about ten years to make that piece, on and off. It had different manifestations at different points in time, and it wasn’t really until getting involved in the Cabaret and working on it with you guys that it became what is now, which I think is kind of like, it’s become conscious in a way! Like, before, it was like an unconscious idea that was trying to find its way out, and with your help, with your very brilliant eyes on it, it’s become its own entity, I think.
mouncealot on her first act with Invisible Cabaret
Never miss an episode from Invisible Cabaret
We release our #InvisiblePodcast about mental health and creativity every other Friday.
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Please do rate and review if you get a chance, it really helps other people find our work!
Invisible cabaret 
4 thoughts on “Clowning, Creativity and C-PTSD on The Invisible Cabaret Podcast (S1:E5)”