In an exploration of the ties between mental health and art, Australian comedian Sam Kissajukian brings his equally humorous and eye-opening journey with bipolar disorder to the American Repertory Theater (ART) at Harvard University through 300 Paintings. After quitting stand-up comedy and moving to an abandoned cake factory, over the course of a six-month manic episode, Kissajukian created 300 paintings that displayed the development of his mental state over time.
Fusing self-deprecation with comedy, 300 Paintings touched audiences as Kissajukian shared his struggles with mental health in an intimate way. Junior Grayson Herrera described his experience as a Teen Council member in the Levine Learning Lab program through ART, where he was able to attend the opening night of 300 Paintings.
“We were sitting exactly in the center of the house. We were essentially at eye level with Sam. It felt very intimate, it felt like we were being told a story as friends versus being talked to as an audience, it made it so much more impactful because it was a story I connected to very heavily,” Herrera conveyed.
Students departed Malden High School on October 15th, enthusiastically awaiting their turn to see the riveting one-man show. Learning Lab Lead Vahdat Yeganeh greeted students as they exited the shuttle bus and walked with them to Harvard University’s Smith Campus Center, where students would be eating provided burritos for dinner before the show.
Artistic Engagement Associate Leah Harris then led students to Farkas Hall at Harvard University, where they would be participating in a workshop and viewing the performance later that evening.
Unlike other ART shows, students would only be participating in one workshop directly before the show instead of the usual three workshops. On this night, Malden was joined by Boston Latin Academy (BLA), another high school, a part of ART’s Levine Learning Lab.
Yeganeh and Harris started the workshop by asking students to move to different sides of the studio based on whether they agreed or disagreed with a series of statements about art: You need to have an artistic education to be considered an artist, art can be officially completed, and considering themselves an artist.
The final statement acted as a transition for students to break off into pairs and discuss with their partners whether or not they considered themselves to be an artist and why. Encouraging broader discussion, Yeganeh and Harris led students to combine their pairs to form larger groups and define what an artist is.
After reconvening to debrief each group’s definition, Yeganeh and Harris handed out different case studies that depicted forms in which art had been used to build and support communities. Students were then able to reflect on their experiences with art within communities in a collaborative drawing, displaying a time they felt seen, to end the workshop.
Students were then escorted to Farkas Hall’s theater, where senior Thomas Conti welcomed the audience to the show alongside another BLA student. Starting the show with a bare stage, Kissajukian appears and begins introducing his background in stand-up comedy.
Kissajukian expressed how he began resenting the stage due to his previous profession, because he felt like he was performing for others’ approval rather than his own satisfaction and passion for comedy. Not being able to draw the line where his job ended and his life began, he decided to quit stand-up comedy.
Turning over a new page in his life, Kissajukian rented a concrete bunker to live in that used to be a cake factory to search for his new purpose. With the discovery of a forgotten beret, he knew what path his life would take next; he would become an artist.
He already looked the part, and there was no time like the present; therefore, he utilized forgotten pieces of cardboard and created his first few paintings. To truly explore all realms of his new passion, Kissajukian decided he would experiment with all different kinds of paintings. He started with portraits, first of himself and then of his former peer Kyle Legacy, a Liverpool comedian.
After receiving some negative feedback from Legacy, Kissajukian did not falter. He entered his second week as an artist experimenting with lucid dreaming. Through changing his sleep schedule so that his brain never shut off, Kissajukian found himself in a comfortable state of consciousness during his dreams, so he would be able to paint them, also known as the start of his psychosis.
Though Kissajukian was underground in an abandoned warehouse, his communication with the outside world was not cut off. Through his favorite form of communication, cryptic and nearly incomprehensible emails, he was able to connect with an artist mentor who told him to try contemporary art and stray away from modern art.
In true Kissajukian fashion, he stubbornly recreated all of his paintings in miniature versions and made intricate shoebox displays with full-blown weather systems to display his miniature creations in, believing that he had proven himself to his mentor and no longer needed his expertise.
Setting his sights on something bigger now that he, the student, had become the master, Kissajukian decided that he would become an inventor. For a whole month, he devoted 7:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m. to creating a new invention. With the remainder of the day, Kissajukian would tirelessly promote his inventions to investors, hedge funds, and even universities until he finally got a response.
While Harvard University did not reply to his email about his revolutionary invention regarding the movement of mold, which does not track with their choice to hire him to perform at their theater in the present day, a hedge fund manager showed interest in Kissajukian’s eBay auction system, where the roles of winning and losing are reversed.
Driven by the absolute confidence only someone deep in mania could have, Kissajukian pitched his idea in a video call the next morning, yielding a ten-thousand-dollar investment in his project to get him to go away.
Elated with triumph, Kissajukian takes his initial invention, which embraced doing the opposite of what was expected of you, and translates it to business practice. Kissajukian decided that with his new investment, he would create a business selling “Pisscasso” shirts. Inspired by the artist and creator Picasso, Kissajukian decided that “Pisscasso” would be the business slogan for destruction because he would be using solely bleach on the shirts, and bleach destroys.
Kissajukian created an online video game museum named Museum of Modernia (MoM) where potential customers would have to virtually travel through space and spinning vortexes to view the products. His investor saw his mania as genius; Kissajukian awoke the next morning with five figures in his bank account.
While at the height of his mania and being financially supported to create his art, as Kissajukian was becoming aggressive, compulsive, and overall malnourished, he had a life-threatening experience that brought him to the realization that he had to stop.
After knocking himself out on the wall and mistakenly knocking over a gallon of blue paint on himself, Kissajukian feared for his life. He knew that he had to make a change, or he could easily end up harming himself further. On his journey to finding stability, he slept in an effort to fix his scattered sleep schedule, and he attended social events to try to reconnect with the outside world after so many months of isolation.
Yet, he faced rejection. Senior Moisha Howse reflected, “Being in that high where you feel euphoric, you feel like you’re doing something amazing and creative, and then the fact that you’re slowly making everything a whole lot worse and you don’t see it until it gets too bad and then the drop after that and what you have to do afterwards to deal with it, I personally relate to that a lot. Seeing yourself after that, and wanting to return to that state, reminds you about how hard the fall is afterwards.”
Kissajukian sought out therapy, where he was officially diagnosed with bipolar disorder. While he did not accept his diagnosis at first, he was able to acknowledge his destructive behaviors and put in the effort of maintenance to not return to them.
Yet, Kissajukian’s journey as an artist was far from over. He soon got a call to share his paintings in a one-day exhibit in Perth, Australia. From this experience, Kissajukian was able to connect that his art was his way of being seen, and that he could share that with others.
Over the next couple of years, Kissajukian has now done a total of six solo exhibitions, the most recent one being in New York City, where he was seen by the ART.
Kissajukian concluded the show by simply stating that he hates endings, and audience members should decide for themselves how they want the evening to end. The audience erupted in applause as the curtains rose behind him to reveal a various array of his paintings, while Kissajukian invited audience members to join him on stage and enjoy the gallery walk, or to meet him in the lobby, where he would be taking questions.
Students appreciated the intimate and light-hearted nature of the show, and how it translated to being able to actually talk to Kissjukian. Sophomore Minerva Davenport described, “This made me feel understood. I was watching it and I was like ‘no, this was written for me.’ I understood everything he was talking about; it was humor I could understand.”
When taking away a message from the show as students, Herrera expressed, “We need to rely on the community we have around us to help support us because of how dangerous isolation can be for the mind. He had a preexisting condition of having bipolar disorder, but I think it translates to everyone, especially with teens who might be battling other mental health struggles like depression or anxiety, or even just navigating life.”
Kissajukian reminded audiences that they are never alone and to create light in even the darkest of situations by relying on their communities.
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