Guest Blog: Writer Matthew Seager on his Play IN OTHER WORDS and the Power of Music on Those Living with Dementia

When making a show, If someone asks how long it ‘should’ take, for example, from initial idea to press night, I think I would have absolutely no idea what to say. It would either be a very short or a very long answer and neither would finish with a quantifiable number of days, months or years. 

….If we had to be honest with ourselves It would be years though, wouldn’t it?

The same goes for where an idea comes from. I’m envious of people more talented than myself who have a backlog of fully formed ideas ready to go at a moment's notice, or seem to be able to, I don’t know, look at a tree for thirty seconds before perfectly articulating the three act masterpiece that’s just popped into their head. 

Of course I’m exaggerating, but certainly there are ideas which form gradually and inconspicuously and some which are able to be clearly traced back to a formative moment in our lives. The latter certainly feels the case with In Other Words,  a love story spanning 50 years about the power of music in dementia care, currently running at the Arcola Theatre during September, World Alzheimer’s month. 

More than ten years ago I was in my last year studying Theatre and Performance at Leeds University. We were facilitating sensory stimulation workshops in a dementia care home in the hope of stimulating memory and social engagement and had decided that morning to play some music at the end of the session.

We had gone with Frank Sinatra’s "My Way". There were around 20 residents in the room, some were almost non-verbal and others were clearly suffering from hallucinations or delusions. I pressed play and what happened next totally floored me. Nearly every resident in that care home stood up and sang, without the need for the song sheets, what seemed like every word. 

Whilst I was studying at drama school, inspired by that moment, I wrote the first draft of the script which we rehearsed after class and put on as part of a theatre festival. I remember thinking it was almost definitely rubbish, but the audience seemed to be so incredibly moved that I realised I could be wrong. Admittedly, my mum was leading the charge with positive feedback that day, but the reaction seems to be just as positive when she’s not in the audience so I hope it’s not just down to her. To see an audience react that way sparked a kind of motivation in me to tell this story to as many people as possible. A motivation which hasn’t diminished in any way a decade or so later. 

It was four years later that the play had its first performance, and more than ten that we now find ourselves remounting it for another run in London and a short tour, thanks to The Utley Foundations wonderful Music for Dementia Campaign. That feels like a long time but, with this project, the process has felt just as important. We’ve partnered with multiple charities that have grown exponentially during this time and seen as conversations about dementia and, particularly the transformative use of music, have increasingly become a more consistent part of the public discourse. 

It speaks to the universality of that story and the themes it explores that the play is also running in Paris at the moment and set to be translated into multiple languages next year. The use of music is not a miraculous fix but it can offer a lifeline to those caring for someone living with dementia. Regular interactions with music in care homes can reduce the need for anti-psychotic meditation in 67% of cases, which is an undeniably impressive statistic. 

Don’t get me wrong, if the next project took ten months to become fully realised, I wouldn’t have any complaints. I know that ten years is a long time, but the experiences I'm having as a direct result are changing the way I look at the world for the rest of my life, which, touch wood, will be a bit longer than that.

In Other Words is at the Arcola Theatre until 30 September, then touring

To post a comment, you must register and login.