Mad is the new play that Melonie Menefee and Jill Henson wrote during this summer. The setting is at an insane asylum set in the late 1800’s in New York. It tells the stories of five women institutionalized for various reasons as well as journalist Nellie Bly, who goes undercover to learn about the treatment of the mentally ill. What she discovers changes her life forever.

This is the second play written by Henson and Menefee; last year’s Rivers of Ink told the story of two sisters in Baghdad. They changed up their setting completely for this year’s story line.

“We wanted to do something based on a story that had actually happened in history, so we were doing a lot of research,” Menefee said. “One day I ran across the story of Nellie Bly and her actual stay in a madhouse. It was pretty intriguing.”

In the play, as in real life, Bly pretended to be insane until she was ordered by the court to be locked up in a women’s asylum on Blackwell’s Island near New York. From there, the stories of the patients she meets and her stay in the madhouse is fiction based on the reality of her stay.

“We started looking into mental institutions in the late 1800s and saw how absolutely horrible it was, and we knew we needed to tell this story,” Menefee said. “It is frightening to see what was considered acceptable back then. Thank goodness strong people like Nellie Bly worked to make things better.”

Auditions were held last month, with assistant Martha Zimmerman joining Henson and Menefee in choosing roles.

“It is always hard to pick roles, and we are never sure that we have made the best choice,” Menefee said. “I will say that Mrs. Henson, Miss Zimmerman and I all made our own cast lists without talking with each other about it, and when we compared notes, we were all spot on.”

With any good play comes a good lesson. Menefee and Henson were inspired by what Nellie Bly set out to do and wanted to tell not only her story, but the stories of many of the people who were locked up at that time. 

“One of the lessons I think it is important for this play to get out there is to not be afraid to stand up to and fight abuse when you see it happening,” Menefee said. “Our reality today would be much darker if it were not for the people in our history who have been brave enough to stand up for what is right.”

Henson has already received requests to use Rivers of Ink from other schools; while BHS will be the first to perform Mad, it could eventually be produced by other companies, as well.

“I hope other schools will decide to do this play in years to come,” Menefee said. “I hope the same thing with Rivers of Ink. I don’t think Mrs. Henson or I will ever get rich off of royalties or anything, but it would be nice to think about the messages from these plays getting out there.”