'Boy in the Bathroom' depicts emotional toll of OCD

We all use the bathroom at some point in the day, but what if we decided to never come out?

The Bloomington Playwrights Project’s newest musical production, “The Boy in the Bathroom,” that will be performed Feb. 16-18, tells the story of David, a college student with obsessive-compulsive disorder who refuses to come out of his bathroom.

“I didn’t necessarily want to produce a play about OCD, but I read the script and I was just so taken by it that I thought it would make a wonderful play,” Producing Artistic Director Chad Rabinovitz said.

The production focuses on the fragile world David, played by IU musical theater major Evan Mayer, builds in his bathroom as a result of the crushing grip the disorder takes on his life.

The play depicts the emotional toll a psychiatric disorder like OCD can take on the person diagnosed and his or her loved ones.

As David struggles to graduate from college within the confines of his bathroom, his mother, played by Lisa Kurz, tries to help by passing food through the inch-wide crack under the door three times a day.

But when Julie, played by theater major Maddie Shea Baldwin, enters the house, David’s world starts to change.

Julie, hired to assist in cleaning the house after David’s mother breaks her hip, slowly befriends the boy who refuses to open up to the world. Julie gets to know David at his most vulnerable.

At one point, Julie dares David to stick his fingertips underneath the doorway and touch hers — as David breaks down in panic, Julie sits on the other side sitting and
listening.

“It’s all in your head, what you’re scared of, the whole world,” Julie tells David in the play.

By staying with David on the other side of the bathroom door, Julie proves to David that in life, no matter how afraid you are, sometimes you have to let love in.

“I thought it was great,” graduate student Naomi Eskin said. “I think it’s important to talk about mental issues that aren’t normally part of our dialogue.”