Anna Marie Galea reviews I Am Still Here, a recent theatre production that was held as part of the Science in the City festival and focused on dementia.

As Charlotte Grech says in I Am Still Here, a poignant piece performed at St James’ Cavalier as part of Science in the City festival, even the word ‘dementia’ feels heavy when spoken out aloud. Indeed, for anyone who has ever witnessed this illness’ degenerative effects, there is truly nothing more devastatingly opaque and shrouded in unkind mystery than this cruel fog which fills the minds of its victims and appears to empty them of who they once were.

Indeed, I myself have witnessed it first hand through the confused eyes of a beloved great aunt, whom I adored so much that I dedicated hours of research to the cause of getting to know the disease more intimately.

This was so that I would be able to better communicate with her without making her feel even more scared and frustrated than she was in the face of something which she was not able to make sense of. It was with this frame of mind that I watched I Am Still Here, and no one was more touched than I by the outcome of the well-constructed piece.

The piece took place on a closed set where the audience met a wheelchair-bound woman, seated with her possessions scattered around her. The protagonist appeared to be in the advanced stages of dementia as she spoke of the scattered thoughts she was having, and the fact that a beautiful young woman whom she didn’t recognise had come to visit her.

We are later led to understand that the young visitor is the lady’s daughter. However, the sick lady is unable to express her recognition.

What follows is a journey through the protagonist’s life, taking us back to the moment in which she is holding her daughter Emma in her arms as a newborn.

Well researched, it was clear that the script was developed through actual, real life situations of sufferers as well as their carers. Grech was able to vocalise the inner workings of a muddled mind both sensitively as well as with a certain depth which is not always afforded to sufferers who are often dismissed and sometimes treated as part of the furniture because they are no longer able to interact as they once did.

Grech was able to convey such a full range of emotions in such a short period of time as she see-sawed between anger, sadness, frustration and nostalgia in a matter of seconds

Grech did not only shine a light on the debilitated state of advanced dementia sufferers through the script. Through a simple change of clothes on set, every time she was going to reenact a new phase of her life, the audience was also invited to walk with her and experience the various phases and nuances of her illness.

With every significant change in her life, a key fact about dementia would flash onto the screen behind the protagonist to further educate the audience about the affliction.

In addition to this, pictures and videos from the protagonist’s past which were sometimes blurred to further illustrate the degeneration of a memory which is letting its owner down were also projected on the screen to poignant affect.

Something I found immensely touching was the way Grech was able to convey such a full range of emotions in such a short period of time as she see-sawed between anger, sadness, frustration and nostalgia in a matter of seconds and left the audience reeling with sympathy and sadness.

Furthermore, the repetition of certain scenarios such as the making of breakfast for her daughter and the protagonist telling her husband that his coffee was getting cold further took the audience down a path of a normal life that has been snatched away and of which there is only a faint residue left.

I Am Still Here sought to take its audience on a trip into the mind of dementia victims and in that it truly did succeed. The piece truly helped to bring to light something which everyone should keep in mind when dealing with dementia sufferers which is the fact that just because dementia robs people of what has shaped them, it does not mean that they are not still there.

Indeed, this fact could not have been explained better than in the poignant and painful closing lines: “My eyes do see, my ears do hear, I am still me, so let’s be clear. My memory may fade, my walk may slow, I am me inside. Don’t let me go.”

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