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Life Inside An Asylum

WUNC | By Anita Rao,
Frank Stasio
Published October 21, 2015 at 12:07 PM EDT
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The cast of the Burning Coal Theatre Company production of ASYLUM by Nicki Miller and Kendall Rileigh, presented in collaboration with Only Child Aerial Theatre.
Right Image Photography, Inc.
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Kendall Rileigh in the Burning Coal Theatre Company production of ASYLUM by Nicki Miller and Kendall Rileigh, presented in collaboration with Only Child Aerial Theatre.
Right Image Photography, Inc.
Sloan Bradford in the Burning Coal Theatre Company production of ASYLUM by Nicki Miller and Kendall Rileigh, presented in collaboration with Only Child Aerial Theatre .
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Sloan Bradford in the Burning Coal Theatre Company production of ASYLUM by Nicki Miller and Kendall Rileigh, presented in collaboration with Only Child Aerial Theatre .
Right Image Photography, Inc.
4 of 4
The cast of the Burning Coal Theatre Company production of ASYLUM by Nicki Miller and Kendall Rileigh, presented in collaboration with Only Child Aerial Theatre.
Right Image Photography, Inc.

Mental healthcare practices in the United States have changed quite a bit in the past two centuries. State hospitals and asylums once housed the great majority of mentally ill individuals, but definitions for what constituted mental illness were often vague and included conditions like epilepsy and PMS. In the 1950s and 60s, government officials pushed towards the deinstitutionalization of mental health care, and many individuals experiencing mental illness were released into the community.

A new show on stage at Burning CoalTheatre explores life inside an asylum in the United States in the mid-1960s. It uses aerial theater to explore the lives of four patients and one nurse whose lives are connected through this building. Host Frank Stasio talks with co-writers Kendall Rileigh and Nicki Miller who founded Only Child AerialTheatre, a Brooklyn-based group co-producing the piece. He is also joined by local actors DeonReleford-Lee and MikaelaSaccoccio. “Asylum” is on stage at MurpheySchool Auditorium in Raleigh through Sunday, Nov. 1.

Watch the trailer for the show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ct98MvqqxoA
Tags
Arts & Culture The State of ThingsMental HealthAsylumMurphey School AuditoriumDeon Releford-LeeMikaela SaccoccioKendall RileighNicki MillerBurning Coal TheatreOnly Child Aerial TheatreAerial TheaterAerialMental HealthcareState InstitutionState HospitalDorothea Dix Hospital
Anita Rao
Anita Rao is an award-winning journalist, host, creator, and executive editor of "Embodied," a weekly radio show and podcast about sex, relationships & health.
See stories by Anita Rao
Frank Stasio
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.
See stories by Frank Stasio
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