Our son was in his final year at drama school when we were plunged headlong into a protracted nightmare. He developed the unshakeable belief that he was God’s Messiah, destined to lead a world-changing revolution and possessing power to breathe life and healing into anyone he met. Dan was a talented actor and a convincing performer. Some assumed that what was happening to him was nothing more than an exciting conversion experience. He had been trained at one of the world’s leading drama academies. He knew how to stay in role even though the part he played was an unusual one.

It became clear that our own lives would be on hold until our son had recovered but we had no idea how long this might take, how inadequate mental health treatments would prove to be, nor how many replays of this nightmare were ahead. Throughout this traumatic time, I kept a detailed diary of events as they took place. Once Dan had gained insight, he described to me everything that he had believed while in the grip of his psychosis. He told me his story and I wrote it down. The narrative is a combined, completely true account of what happened between 2012 and the present day.

It is a story of the relationship of a mother and her son and the love and commitment of a family who navigate this crisis together and refuse to give up. It is a compelling tale of humour, irony and the search for truth. Our hope is that it will be helpful to those undergoing similar journeys. Dan’s account gives a glimpse of what it is like to experience the extremes end of mental illness and my reflections share something of the heartache of being a carer.

 

My Son was the Messiah

by Jane and Dan Read

 

Introduction

I fall silent as I turn the iron handle of the solid, wooden door. It groans, then gapes reluctantly. Once inside I am asked for my name by a receptionist behind an opaque glass window. My mouth is dry. I speak too quietly, so I have to announce it for a second time. I am allowed in through the security gate then walk the length of the tiled passage, tiptoeing around the outside of the smokers’ yard with its scattering of desolate looking men as they light up with trembling hands. I glimpse their hopelessness as I catch the first whiff of their tobacco. Six steep stone steps to reach the final set of locked doors, then I wait unbearable seconds until staff respond to our buzzer. When the moment is right, they will allow me inside.

My eyes scan left to right, right to left, searching, frantically peering through the unbreakable glass. I catch sight of my son, my beautiful boy, dressed in his coat and scarf, bag packed, pacing the corridor and sobbing. He wants to get out! He thinks he can come home today but I already know this is going to be impossible. He might see me as the cause of his imprisonment. I watch his tears fall faster as I press my hand against the cold glass of the window. On his side of the divide, he stops momentarily, to place his palm against mine.

 

Chapter 1.

DAN

 

‘In order to act, you must be somewhat insane. A sensible man is satisfied with thinking’

Georges Clemenceau

       

Being an actor, being cast as a character, it’s all about the look. The look is everything. Your face needs to fit the role for a start. You need the right features, the right expression, the right haircut and even the right sort of teeth.  This is clear from the line-up of headshots in the entrance hall. I am staring at the row of portraits. Almost every face has the same noble, classic shape, nearly all of them attractive and perfect-looking. Tutors have recently threatened to stick a photo of the director’s dog where the headshot should be, if students don’t hand them in on time.

‘That’ll probably improve Tony’s job prospects, poor sod,’ jokes one of the guys. But I’m assuming there’ll be plenty of decent parts offered to the grim-faced as well as the beautiful in the end. I don’t think my own features are too bad and I took a long time over choosing my best headshot to put on display.

‘You have a nice visage for screen work darling,’ my TV tutor had commented. ‘Plenty going on behind the eyes.’

They can change how you look pretty easily, these days anyway. Some people lose weight and go without sleep to make their character more convincing. Some are even told to gain weight for a part. Acting can put quite a strain on your body over time. I sometimes wonder what it does to your mind.

The first two years are intense. The third, completely insane. My best mates become my competitors. I am watching the other actors in my year group, Reece’s raw talent, Simon’s magnetic personality. Nathan, ‘the stage natural.’ All of them have the right look, the right physicality, the right voice.

It’s all about the voice really. The voice is everything. You are constantly asking yourself, ‘Is my voice interesting? Is it convincing enough? Is my accent any good? Have I inhabited my character yet? Can I stay in role?’ alongside the more basic question, ‘Can I remember my lines?’ At least being given a part, being told to be someone else all the time, means I don’t have to decide who I really am. Not yet anyway.

People assume that someone choosing to be an actor is likely to be super-confident, extrovert, or at the very least, noticeable. But this wasn’t me at all. As a small kid I was pretty much the opposite, sensitive, quiet, reluctant to be the centre of attention.  I used to hide from the over-zealous Sunday school teacher when it was time to sing our jolly Jesus action songs on stage. I abandoned my violin lessons altogether, once I discovered I was being lined up for the school orchestra. I did my best to avoid Beaver outings and Cub camps, which sounded terrifying and I was always the earliest to bed out of our family, dreading being late for school, or late for anything.

I found out by accident that I could make people laugh, so I used my wits to keep friends entertained and bullies distracted. I was good at accents, playing the piano, walking on my hands and break dancing. My popularity grew, but my favourite games were those I played alone. To relax, I’d escape into fictional scenarios of phenomenal super-heroes performing breath-taking feats. Inside my private world of make-believe, I was secretly fulfilling some crucial, action-packed, world-changing role. Sometimes, I took my ideas from films or computer games. Most came from my own imagination.

Mid-teens, I began to have a recurring nightmare to do with acting, finding myself on stage, pre-performance, without a script or a single rehearsal. I had no choice but to blag it. My dreams turned to panic when I discovered too late, that I had neither props, nor costume and on one embarrassing occasion, no clothes on at all.

I am not quite sure when this awkward reticence turned into a desire to act. The why is even more of a mystery. I think it all began when I was about ten, sitting with my family in a London West End theatre watching my first musical, “We will Rock You,” It was Rob’s choice, for his eighteenth birthday treat. I was taken up the whole theatre vibe, the lighting, the exciting sounds of drums and electric guitar, the enthusiastic participation of the audience.  Between mouthfuls of popcorn, I ask my brother,

‘Who is this guy on stage?’

He checks in his programme, ‘Tony Vincent’. He whispers. ‘Probably earns quite a bit from playing the lead in a show like this.’

I’m busy exploring the roof of my mouth with my finger, trying to extract popcorn kernels from between my teeth, ‘You mean being on the stage can be a person’s actual job, not just a hobby? How cool is that?’

I must look into this. It seems much less boring than some jobs I could end up doing. So, I join local theatre groups and find I can learn lines more quickly than most kids, especially anything with a bit of rhythm to it. People say they enjoy watching my performances, but I’m not convinced I’m any good until the day I get into the National Youth Theatre, at thirteen and get invited to take part in my first West End production. This early taste of the professional scene creates a deeper hunger in me. I begin exploring possible routes into acting.

Competition for places at good drama schools is huge, so we decide that some early audition experience might be a good starting point. (I can always have another go the following year if unsuccessful.) When the letter arrives a week or two later, I feel a bit like Billy Elliot, shaking with nerves, so I ask mum to open it, trusting she’ll say the right thing if it’s a rejection.  She is much more excited than I am when she sees I’ve been offered a place.

‘You are in Dan! That’s brilliant! And they are asking for you to go back for another audition. They are putting you forward for the talent scholarship!’.

I didn’t even know that there were any talent scholarships! Getting in would have been enough, but if I win that, it will save dad some of the fees.

Mum rehearses lines with me. She did English lit at Uni, so she understands Shakespeare a bit better than I do. I do the audition, then another letter arrives from Roland, one of the tutors to say I’ve got the scholarship. It’s just two days before Tom and Cath’s wedding. Dad is busy outside, hosing down the car so we have to shout quite loudly, to get his attention.

‘Come over here! Quickly.’ We are beckoning to him. Dad is frowning. He doesn’t generally like being interrupted when he’s in the middle of a job.

‘Good News!’ Mum bellows

‘The letter came! The letter! She is waving it around in the air. ‘He’s got it! He got the scholarship!’

Everyone’s rushing around, hyper-busy today but mum insists on squeezing in a quick celebration lunch, ham sandwiches and Prosecco. Winning this scholarship convinces my family that I should go ahead, even though I’m only just old enough to get in and will be the youngest in my year group. I’ve done one year of sixth form, but I’m loving the idea of being in London instead of having to go back to boring old school. An exciting, future beckons and I can’t wait to get started.

I meet Carl at the open day and discover that he’s from York too, so it makes sense to look for a flat share together. We get on well, reading scripts, learning lines, watching actor interviews on our laptops. We laugh and joke and do impressions of our tutors and the other first year undergrads. We cook roast chickens on Sundays and invite friends round to help us eat them. Carl is untidy but knows quite a bit about the different agents and casting directors. We go out of the flat, forgetting our keys and slamming the door behind us (his fault). We discover we have mice under the sofa. (I blame Carl for that too.) We gradually stop noticing the smell of leaking gas from the kitchen boiler. One evening we cause a loud and very messy explosion when we put a pottery casserole on the hob to warm up Mum’s Bolognese. She explains afterwards,

‘Crock pots go in the oven, not on the hob. I thought you knew that already.’

At the start of the long summer break, we unplug everything in the flat, to save on electricity, returning weeks later to the stench of rotting meat inside a flooded freezer. We even get ourselves beaten up one Saturday night by a random gang of thugs with angry faces and knuckle dusters. I do my best to protect Carl, who’s been knocked out so I end up with a black eye, which might have been helpful for some roles. Mum demands to look at my injuries on skype. Dad says,

‘You must avoid London clubs after midnight and always pay attention when you are crossing that busy Talgarth Road, especially if you’ve had a drink.’

I turn up on time to classes, keen and focussed. But my confidence is shaky. I know this is going to be a lot harder than I’d ever imagined. I interpret any comments or feedback as criticism. If I’m asked to repeat a scene, I take this it to mean that I must have done everything wrong the first time. I am the sort of person who needs clear, positive direction as well as masses of encouragement, but this doesn’t seem to be the tutors’ priority at all. They assume that we are all expert actors already, dropping us in it from day one, then waiting in the wings, for us to fail.  I really don’t get what they want from me. I am left believing that they are much happier with the performances of the other students. Some of them will end up being ‘the ones to watch’ not me.

It’s the Christmas break, after my first term in London and I daren’t tell my folks that I feel like giving up already. Mum and Dad will be so disappointed. Tom comes across me in tears in my bedroom on Christmas day.

‘What’s up Danny?’ He sits next to me on my bed. Like my brother, I have always been more anxious on the inside than people realise and I’m driven, like he is, to achieve perfection.

‘I’m just not good enough. I won’t be able to live up to what other people expect of me. The students in my year group are doing so well already. They are more deserving of the talent scholarship and the attention of the top agents, than I am’.

‘Maybe they are just more confident than you. It doesn’t mean they are better. But I know what it’s like to have self-doubt, Danny. I’ve been there too.’ Tom gives me a hug. Mum comes in to find us and is surprised to see me sad. She feels responsible for everyone’s happiness most of the time but finds it difficult to understand how anyone could possibly be sad on Christmas day.’

‘Just relax and try to enjoy your three years at drama school,’ the family tell me. ‘You don’t need to be the best all the time.’

So, I return to London feeling scared but driven to improve, to attain the unattainable. I am vulnerable, suggestible, ready to follow every bit of advice to the letter, but never quite satisfied with what I manage to produce.