'Tappyness' theatre production delves into mental health, unmasks 'smiling depression'

By: Tatyana Woodall

You’re never fully dressed without a smile - and Tappyness, a solo theatre production about one woman struggling to reconcile an unfulfilled life with her own mental health, takes the phrase more seriously than most. 

The premise behind the show comes from a phenomenon called ‘smiling depression,’ - when people with depression choose to mask their symptoms, opting to fake their feelings either through excessive posts on social media, or inside their own personal relationships. 

Combining tap dance with the whimsical tunes of the hit Broadway musical Annie, Matt Greenberg, a graduate teaching associate in the department of theatre and choreographer for the project, says the idea behind the short film came from a desire to showcase mental health awareness through dance. 

“I just think it’s for people to experience art, and hopefully not feel as alone, watching this piece,”  Greenberg said. “But it’s kind of a universal truth we all want to go out, and sometimes we all feel stuck inside.”

Relying on chairs, trashed pill bottles and even old pizza boxes as props to create an atmosphere of deep loneliness, Erin Alyse Parsons, MFA-acting theatre major and star of the show, says the piece was originally a down-and-dirty class assignment. 

“We had essentially two class periods which were two hours each, so we spent a total of four hours working on this and then presented it,” she said. “And then Matt decided to submit for this and build on that little seed that was planted.”

The project theme also captured the interest of The Urban Arts Space as a part of their Hybrid Arts Lab, a multi-venue teaching lab that experiments with how audiences consume, and interact with visual arts. 

“Mental health is something that’s always an important topic, but especially right now with this isolation that we’re all experiencing,” Parsons said. “We have to isolate to keep ourselves safe, so that isolation is such a relatable part of this, I think the world is experiencing so much more than when we started making it. I feel like it’s so much more important now than before.”

As the team wrapped up production on the final cut, she commented on the kind of response she hopes to see from the audience.  

“It’s strange to do theatre on film, and what’s so important about that is connecting to a community, so I’m interested to know if other people see it and get people to connect to it.” Parsons said. 

A recording of the live performance of Tappyness will run from Sept. 21 through Oct. 2, on the Urban Arts Space’s website.

See https://uas.osu.edu/events/tappyness for more information, and follow @ohiostatetheatre on instagram to keep up with events like this one.