Jon Haynes – författare

Mediterranean roasted vegetables. Finnish Folk and Margaret Drabble. Adolf Hitler and the knitted cover for a toilet roll. An audience split in two experiencing auditory hallucinations.The new work from acclaimed theatre company Ridiculusmus is inspired by a treatment method for psychosis that has virtually eradicated schizophrenia from Western Lapland. The text is syncopated and harmonised throughout with duets on words and phrases, cooking up a dizzying concoction of memory, delusion and reality that culminates in a unified third act of denouement set between the past and present – the crucial defining moment of the protagonist’s life. It conjures up a comic nightmare of delusion while offering a hopeful world of polyphonic uncertainty, a world where dialogue can transform your life.

A new play from acclaimed experimental company Ridiculusmus about MDMA assisted therapy for Post Traumatic Stress.Welcome to the world of war veteran Zach. As the last man standing, Zach has retreated into a tiny dugout under a barrage of hostile fire. His enemies are cunning, using every trick in the book to mess with his mind. Even the landscape is weird: audibly, chemically and most of all physically… it is a cardboard box, in Zach’s kitchen, in Port Talbot. His wife whispers, kindly, that it’s safe to come out. But is it a trap? For if the real enemy is Zach himself then who will win if he loses?Give Me Your Love is the second instalment of Ridiculusmus’s three-pronged investigation into innovative approaches to mental health. Informed by the latest scientific research, it explores the healing potential in altered states of consciousness.

Meet two characters, blessed with eternal life but denied eternal youth. As they stumble through their bizarre existence, neither fully alive nor fully dead, they attempt to reclaim the right to a good death as they try to remember how to grieve.Comedy duo Ridiculusmus reclaims humankind's last taboo from imminent eradication, in a fragile farce about ageing, dying and grieving - a blend of symbolist mysticism and synesthesia that has the fear of ageing in its sights and oozes with the positivity of elderhood and good deaths.

A major new work by the performance group Ridiculusmus. Challenging, vividly imaginative and utterly absorbing play.