#GetMad: Rendezvous with Madness Festival Workman Arts, Toronto October 10 – 20, 2019

y experience with Workman Arts’s annual festival, Rendezvous with Madness (RWM), began at the opening reception. I arrived anxious, on account of anticipation and a generalized anxiety disorder, still shaking with palms sweating from the panic attack I’d experienced on the way over. Upon entering, I stole a nervous glance at my phone to see if my eyes were still puffy from the involuntary tears that had fallen mid-panic. I cringed at the incongruity of hiding evidence of my mental illness while attending the world’s largest, longest-running mad-positive arts festival—and (2019) and realized I was exactly where I needed to be. Each portrait featured the same subject, lying face down, in an overt display of grief amidst a backdrop of bystanders unfazed by her public collapse—their apathy humorously juxtaposing the clear distress and vulnerability of her position. I couldn’t help but empathize with these images. Crouse’s performance portraits candidly capture the prevailing attitude toward mental illness from the public sphere—chary of engaging with madness, the bystanders lean away from the situation.