Anatomy of a Suicide by Alice Birch

With Anatomy of a suicide, Alice Birch has changed the game in contemporary dramas. There are a ton of points to hit on with this one (because with a title like that, what do you expect). First thing to note, is the way the script is written. The first scene is written as normal, but the second scene introduces the following generation of characters simultaneously, following with a 3rd in the 3rd scene. By the 3rd, you have 3 scenes happing with overlapping dialogue,

written much like a musical score. And as someone who loves tough reads, this one was a doozy to grab the pace of. A lot of the overlapping dialogue is very back and forth, which doesn't seem so hard, until you realize you also have 2 other scenes of witty, dramatic back and forth dialogue happening at the same time. A main component of scripts is that they are meant to be seen, not just read. Reading is an extra way to take in the content, and easily more accessible for the masses than seeing every work on stage. But with this show, I feel its almost necessary to see it (maybe more than others) simply due to the fact of the complex structure of the script. 

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I also want to give context as to why I chose this play to discuss before we really dive in. As most people who grew up in the early 2000s, I've battled mental health problems for the last decade and a half, with varying degrees of symptoms from any combination of letters you can come up with, OCD tendencies, ADHD, Anxiety, Depression, Eating Disorders. The question lies in the cyclical nature of "are these symptoms caused by this issue, or are the issues a result of another thing." Overthinking, isolation, and sadness were the trio with prime real estate in my consciousness in my teens, and with a couple (thankfully) failed attempts on my own life in those years, its hard to separate yourself completely from something that defined you were at such an impressionable age. We call this suicidal ideation and passive suicidal thoughts. I think of these as 2 sides of the same chip (metaphorically similar to a chip you would get in AA perhaps) in your way to healing. As soon as it felt like I hade made it past the finish line, something new would come along and I would be right back at the beginning. But this time with a bigger and better tool box that equipped me for fighting this thing again. I just didn't realize I had this tool box until 2 years ago, so you can imagine the devastation to a 14 year old you finally felt like they were doing great, only to drop to rock bottom once more. Finding what I believed was solace in my online community on tumblr, really just made it a competition on who was more depressed or who had the worst eating disorder (I believe the later would now be described as Ana Sisters on tiktok). You can imagine the little teenage me that still lives in the deepest abyss of my brain popped up front and center when I saw the title for the first time in The Drama Book Shop last summer, at the absolute worst time of my life. That version of me was long gone, but sill unfortunately always take up an inch of my thoughts on some days and stretches of miles on others. My brain chemistry was permanently altered from the decade of dealing with this, so its unrealistic to think it wont always be part of my life, just like grief. The best metaphor I've seen (mainly used to talk about grief but I think is also extremely helpful in explaining this) its like a giant red ball in a very tiny box. As life keeps going the box grows, and in the beginning you literally cant move around the ball because its pinning you to the wall in the box, but as the box grows so does the room for you to walk around and observe and share the space with the ball. But the ball also has more room to move. It doesn't grow; but it can bounce and hit you out of nowhere or life can tip the box over and both you and the ball are slammed to the new floor that was once the side of your box so now you have to navigate this new normal. 

There is also something to be said about my obsession with trying to understand and dissect the commodification (not sure if that's actually a word) of mental health/mental illnesses. One one hand, the ability to talk about our mental health is ABSOLUTELY saving lives. But we have almost gone to the extreme with the weapons of therapy speak and brushing off the worst of humanity (I'm specifically talking about fun violence and the media dish to paint white men as troubled souls). When mainstream mental health influencers all look like the same tiny, white blonde girl, they are applauded for speaking out. But if POC speak out, the algorithm flags their videos as inappropriate. (This is a comment on the algorithms and not mental health influencers, so please don't look for drama where there's not). And when all the commercialized art that depicts mental health issues as crying all the time or on the verge of a breakdown 24/7, it feels like the conversation is halted before we can even start it. It has painted this fragile image of what bad mental health looks like, while that is maybe 20% of what it feels like for some people. The reality is, most people I've interacted with that live with this day to day, don't show signs of having any problems to begin with. Why would you, if the world is going to look at you like a glass vase, afraid to do or say the wrong thing in fear of breaking this shell of a person. No one likes to be pitied. And by the time that starts to show, its because people are too far down the hole to care. I'll move on because this is an unending conversation, that I don't know will ever have a real answer and/or a solution. I'm a believer that its hard not to be depressed or anxious when the world is literally on fire, burning down around us while the people who should be working to save us and create a better future are throwing gasoline from water buckets on us and then telling us to work harder to put the fires out. Moving on...

Turning back to the plot, the show follows 3 generations of women, who each deal with mental health issues, all in their own ways. With generational trauma at the forefront, the discussion of "nature versus nurture" is given a whole new meaning. Is depression (in this case, its the main culprit) passed down through our DNA or is it a learned trait, and is there a difference between the 2? Follow up, does it really matter? Are children the answer (no, but more on that later)? How do you break the cycles, to save your children from your own fate, while not causing them any more harm? Is there such a thing?

There is research that shows our DNA is physically changed in specific ways due to trauma, So when we pass our DNA to our metaphorical children, their likelihood of possessing the same MHI (mental health issues) as their parents skyrockets. Add in poverty, unhappy parents in an unhappy marriage, school and peer related issues, and now social media and you're just handing kids MHI on a silver platter.

But what about in the 70s, where you weren't aloud to talk about it? When women were still expected to be the perfect housewife, have kids and bear the burden of everything it means to be a mother. That's the theme of the grandmothers story. And when it does get too heavy for her, she's reprimanded time and time again. Her husband upset with the fact that he can't help her, her sister in law telling her to have more babies because that's what will give her purpose in life, and the feeling of needing to take care of her family, even in death, Diana wears the many hats of a woman society has failed. Is it a stand alone story, or a secret story of the masses who are afraid to share their true pasts? And what's worse for a child to witness? A mother who uses wine to cope so she doesn't kill herself, fighting every fiber of her being to try and be the best mother she can be still causes a lot of scars on a child. When they find the pools of blood or hear the mother talking about how she wishes she could love life enough to want to be alive, but don't worry darling, I love you more than I love myself. In a time when women were supposed to keep smiling and if they didn't, they would be given the strongest drugs possible to get them to stop thinking. "Stop thinking about your circumstances, and stop thinking about your dead-end loveless marriage. Stop think about the dreams you gave up and the child you love so much, but you were forced into having. Just STOP THINKING at all. Don't speak. Not even a word." How many women did we lose in the name of populating? How many people were left behind when they picked up the title mother because that's what was expected of them? I say all of this as a mother myself. My Daughter is the absolute light of my life, and I lost my mother a couple months prior to finding out my husband and I were expecting. When I look back on my childhood where I don't remember most of it because of my MHI, I realize the fights and the animosity between my mother and I in my teenage years were from both of us dealing with our issues separately. I know my mother had a hard childhood, but she had a wonderful mother and she became a wonderful mother in spite of all the harsh life lessons she was handed. 

Don't punish the behavior you want to see. Sounds like common sense, right? But when we are pushed the narrative that we should ask for help before its too late and met with "Im sorry but I just don't have the space for this" at every corner and "I'm not your therapist to trauma dump on" from person who touts "Mental Health Matters," what do you expect us to do? Everyone wants a community until it means participating in the community. 

And how many times does it take for someone to give you the same answer before you accept that answer for what it is. It may not be the answer you want but can we start accepting what people say to be true? 

After being changed due to witnessing her mothers MHI and subsequent suicide after she graduated high school, Anna decides to end cycles before her daughter is old enough to know her. Why allow the same thing that messed you up as a child, affect your own children. You have to fuck them up in new ways? (That's just a terribly timed, poorly made joke) Anna's biggest fault is not wanting to be anything like her mother. So much so that she goes to the opposite extreme and decides to let her daughter grow up without a mother, before she even has a chance to wish for a "better mom" that doesn't have MHI. (This really shouldn't be a spoiler as suicide is literally in the title...) 

Bonnie's response to the trauma of not growing up with a mother is quite simple. You can't fuck up your kids if you don't have any. And you can't have a dead-end marriage if you don't let anyone in, and when mom and grandma both killed themselves in the same house, just don't live there, and you wont fall to the same fate. But fighting our wiring is so hard. Even in pregnancy, your child's nervous system and brain chemistry can be altered just by your emotions, so some could say Bonnie's was set up to fail before she was even given a chance to live. 

But what about Bonnie's agency? 

While Bonnie certainly wasn't given everything she might have needed to thrive as a child, by believing she was completely set up to fail takes away any belief that Bonnie was the resilient and courageous person Birch wrote her to be. Bonnie opposites her mother and grandmother in many ways. When the first 2 women are introduced, they are patients in a hospital bed post suicide attempt. Bonnie is the doctor. She made the choice to put herself through school, rather than make the choice to marry and stay home. What advantages she lacked from losing her mother before she really knew her, she was given the advantage of having a real choice in whether or not she wanted to have kids. She doubles down on this by choosing what she believes is best for her. A choice we are still fighting for today. And a choice Bonnie still has to push for her needs as a patient towards the end of the play. 

What truly resonates with me is this Idea of generational trauma, and the ending of cycles. Each generation carries the trauma from those before us at the cellular level. Research here. It is up to each person to help heal that through various means. Ending certain cycles. Anna (Bonnie's mother) believes it is in her daughter's best interest to end the cycle of suffering and withering before your child's eyes. But in doing so, created a new trauma Bonnie must heal moving forward, and continued the cycle her mother started of killing herself. And continuing the cycle of having a kid because "thats what's next," as opposed to making the choice because it felt right for them. Bonnie makes it her sole mission to choose to do things differently in every way and in making these choices, you see her similarities with her mother and grandmother in her personality and cadence of speech, more so than in her actions. 

The Title. There is so much to breakdown, that I get overwhelmed and decided to just pick a spot and start discussing. The word anatomy, for example. According to the Oxford dictionary has 2 definitions,

"1. the branch of science concerned with the bodily structure of humans, animals, and other living organisms, especially as revealed by dissection and the separation of parts. 

2. a study of the structure or internal workings of something." 

You could choose either (or both) definitions to analyze this show. For "starving artist who likes to sound smart" purposes, Im going to start with the second definition. 

"A study of the structure or internal workings of suicide"

And in research studies, you have to have multiple research participants. Boiling down these 3 women to "research participants" feels wrong as it takes away any agency these women have or had (or lack there of). We really are able to see the structure of how societies effects warp these people's lives to the point of feeling like there is no other way through. We are willing witnesses to others' suffering. Both in this show and in life. We are actively trying to understand the structure of their lives that lead to this choice of suicide for them. And we ask ourselves, how did it get so bad? How did we end up here? This play will have you questioning everything, and I know that's a scary place to be for some people, but I hope you take the more helpful approach and ask yourself "how can I not be a willing witness to others' suffering, and take action to help." This doesn't mean we all need to be heroes but we can actively change our subconscious biases that actively harm others.