NOHO REVIEW OF JESSIE'SMESSY MIND

Jessie's Messy Mind

NoHo Review of “Jessie’s Messy Mind”
By Samantha Simmonds Ronceros
“Jessie’s Messy Mind” is a riveting glimpse inside the life and mind of the extraordinary actress, writer, activist and bipolar schizophrenic, Jessie Knowles.
I left the show feeling privileged to have been there and that is quite an accomplishment for a play to have on its audience. Jessie has created a world on stage that shows what it is like to occupy her own fascinating mind. A mind that constantly bounces from one thing to the next. A mind that loves passionately, deeply and with great risk to itself. A mind that self destructs, then putts along seemingly untarnished for long periods to all those around it before it spins out of control once more.
This play is a testament to the courage and tenacity of a woman full of the brightness of the world and several very distinct personalities. All of these personalities vie for attention, sometimes interrupting at the most inopportune moments in her life. Are they her or aspects of her or something else? Many of them she has grown accustomed to, but some, more disturbingly are ‘others’ not of her conscious mind. These bring the darkness and the mania and the profound depression.
As a person with mental health issues, she has beaten her own path through the world. She has made her own way in her own way, so to speak, and the result is a life full of possibilities and light as well as the sadness and depression. She has more than survived though, she has triumphed and her journey so far is a revelation as is the show that has grown up around it.
She has a daughter, she has a purpose and a beauty beyond the average, boring normality that we tend to measure our own selves against. Hers is an artist’s soul and mind, and along with that comes a good deal of texture. She reminds me of the greatest minds amongst us. Slightly odd, in the best possible way, slightly out of rhythm with most, slightly angelic in the real sense, the historical sense, when angels were the strangers amongst us and a direct connection to the divine.
Of course it’s true that the most gifted can also be the most troubled. Jessie is supremely gifted. She writes songs and sings them to us, punctuating the performance with wit, insight and heartbreak. Hers is a path much less travelled and it is that unique and sometimes painful path that gives her talent a deep reason and an ability to touch an audience in the way a child can, without fear, without the constraints of what we are told is civil. I loved this play. It is heartfelt and true, honest and brave, and Jessie is heroic in the energetic and utterly flawless philosophy of her messy, mad mind…Bravo!!!!