30 July 2012
The O Show: Can Performance Cure?

Hosted by Oriana Fox
Guests: Bernadette Ainsworth, Liz Bentley and Sam Rumbelow
All photographs: Laura Nardelli.
This special edition of The O Show features Oriana’s real-life therapist, Bernadette Ainsworth, who taught our host how to unconditionally accept her self and others. Perhaps more importantly, Bernadette made Oriana aware that by performing in front of a live audience, she was practicing what Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapists call ‘shame attacking’. We will explore this phenomenon further, asking Bernadette to clarify exactly how performance, the R.E.B.T. way, can be used to change our emotional responses to whatever life throws at us.
Also joining us is Liz Bentley, a psychotherapist by day and performer/comedienne by night. Liz does a lot of self-disclosing for someone whose day job requires a high level of anonymity. Liz will share with us the contradictions and correlations of her double life. We will also hear about how therapy helped her to overcome her struggles with drugs, relationships, abuse and the diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis and how, these days, performing ‘keeps her out of trouble’.
Oriana Fox with Bernadette Ainsworth
Our third guest is the method acting coach Sam Rumbelow who recently collaborated with Turner-prize winning artist Gillian Wearing on her controversial film Self Made (2010). Sam feels strongly about the therapeutic potential of performance, but comes at it from a completely different angle than our other two guests. As a fierce proponent of The Method and having worked on himself through 12 years of Jungian analysis, Sam believes that the unconscious mind holds the key to creativity and psychological wellbeing and that by experiencing the full range of our emotions we come closer to knowing what we truly desire.
Liz Bentley Performs on The O Show
This episode will premiere at the ‘Potentials of Performance’ event in Hackney Wick in October 2012.
See footage of previous episodes of The O Show here:
http://orianafox.com/category/video/
Liz Bentley: http://www.lizbentley.co.uk/
Sam Rumbelow: http://actingclasseslondon.co.uk/method-acting-teachers.html
Bernadette Ainsworth: http://www.cbtcoventgarden.com/index.php/the-therapist