Taking the influence of the Anti-Psychiatry Movement on different radical philosophies into account, the radio play is a subversion of the usual power relationship between psychiatrists and their patients.
Here, it’s the patients who experimentally explore the psychology of their psychiatrists, shedding light on an obscure subject.

Different artists and writers who have experienced psychiatry firsthand, share their personal impressions of their psychiatrists while et the same time expressing their political demands and concerns towards society as a whole.

With references to the writings on psychiatrists by Aby Warburg, LaToya Manly-Spain, Dietmar Kamper, Otto E. Rössler, Antonin Artaud, Sozialistisches Patientenkollektiv, Jean-Paul Sartre, Rainald Goetz, Ernst Herbeck, Kate Millett, Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, Richard Sennett, Jürgen Habermas, Heiner Keupp, Edgar Cabanas Diaz and Eva Illouz, the text is a mixture of anonymous documentary accounts of historical and present patients, as well as essayistic exalted narrations.

Speakers:
Luise Boege, LaToya Manly-Spain, Josephine Israel, Malte Kaiser, Vincent Sauer, Max Martens and Jana Papenbroock

Music:
Helena Ratka

Sound Design and mix:
Simone Weber/ Supersound!

Text:
Jana Papenbroock

Directors:
Jana Papenbroock & Max Martens

Radio play by Max Martens and Jana Papenbroock
Development funded by the Fleet Street Residency and the Cultural Board of the city of Hamburg
ⓒ Jana Papenbroock & Max Martens, Hamburg/Berlin 2019

Preview:
Fleetstreet Theatre
Play Reading of Sick Talks with Sophia Kennedy, Helena Ratka & Max Martens
Hamburg, June 18 2019

Premier:
SWR2
Broadcast of Sick Talks
October 21st 2019, 7pm

ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe
Performance of Sick Talks during the ARD Radio Play Days
Karlsruhe, November 7th 2019
Sick Talks is nominated for the ARD Pinball Radio Play Prize