Jesse's life is really not that bad. He's got a good job, a car, and an affectionate girlfriend—even if she is a little too enthusiastic. He's even got a pretty nurse pursuing him, so it's not as if his family and friends should be on the lookout for signs of depression. Even if they did see it, what could they do about it?

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A quick survey of the writings of the world's leading psychiatrists on the problem of depression soon reveals that the experts of this age have advanced very little since the ancient Greeks theorised that 'black bile' was the cause of melancholia. Most modern authorities have finally rejected the ridiculous notion that depression could be caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain, but that doesn't seem to get us any closer to solving the problem.

Quickly becoming the leading cause of disability worldwide, depression is not going away, no matter how attentively we ignore it. More than a quarter of the Australian population is expected to suffer from depression and related illnesses at some stage of their lives, but we still struggle to define what depression is. A high proportion of people who go to a GP are believed to be suffering from depression, despite complaining of a symptom more definable, such as pain, tiredness or poor sleep. And while the illness itself is not life-threatening, six per cent of those seriously affected eventually kill themselves.

While there is great dissention about the cause of depression, the treatments recommended are all much the same. The irony, I think, is that all our research has simply brought us back to John Donne's comment four hundred years ago that "no man is an island". While Donne wasn't talking about melancholia or depression specifically, he hit upon what is today the most commonly prescribed treatment for depression, and it is perfectly justifiable to turn his statement around to say that any man who seeks to make himself an island is doomed, and thus not a man at all. It was a dire warning against individualism, but despite how widely Donne is quoted, we live in an age in which the dogma of individualism is taken to extremes.

There is nothing so debilitating as having no sense of purpose or hope, and although the statistics on depression are frightening, the experience of depression is far worse. Working on this show has been the single most rewarding directing experience of my life--I might go so far as to say it was even empowering, but only time will tell that. I had no idea how autobiographical the play was when I wrote the script; while the events of the plot bear very little resemblance to the events of my own life, Jesse's experience is almost all mine. My hope is that this play opens people's eyes to what depression is like as an experience, rather than as an illness.