I was watching the Tony Awards the other night and was pleased to find a Broadway production that focuses on bipolar disorder. Next to Normal won several Tony awards.

The musical, starring Alice Ripley, is about a family trying to cope with a mother and wife with bipolar disorder (also known as manic depression). She won Best Leading Actress in a Musical for her role as Diane Goodman.

Interested? Here is a tidbit from the musical:

“I wanted to get ahead on the lunches,” Diana tells her husband, Dan, as she frenetically lines up slices of white bread on the floor and begins piling on the lettuce and mayo. That is the moment in “next to normal,” the new musical at the Booth Theater, when Dan (J. Robert Spencer) realizes it is time for his manic-depressive wife (Alice Ripley) to go back into therapy….

Taken from the Next to Normal website at http://www.nexttonormal.com/news

They performed a small portion of the musical during the Tony Awards and it is definitely something I am interested in seeing. It vividly relays the emotional whirlwind experienced by a person with bipolar disorder. I think it is great that the disorder is getting this kind of publicity. It helps raise awareness and reduce the stigma associated with bipolar disorder.

If you would like to learn more about Next to Normal and its cast, please visit their website at http://www.nexttonormal.com. It’s definitely worth taking a look at and I don’t know how in the world I am just now finding out about it. I am so out of the loop.

Related posts:

1. All About Bipolar: What it’s like