{"id":871,"date":"2018-06-28T14:23:43","date_gmt":"2018-06-28T14:23:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/17\/?page_id=871"},"modified":"2018-06-29T19:51:13","modified_gmt":"2018-06-29T19:51:13","slug":"editorial-note","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/17\/editorial-note\/","title":{"rendered":"Editorial note"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vinia Dakari<\/strong>*<\/a>\u00a0(Greece) and\u00a0Catherine Rogers<\/strong>**<\/a>\u00a0(USA)<\/p>\n

The special topic of this issue, Medicine and\/in Theatre, grew out of the currently heightened interest in the interface of theatre and medicine that has grown steadily over the years and has acquired a multidimensional character. Attentive to the expanding literature on medical performance, applied theatre in health and care, theatre-based medical education, and many other areas of research and practice, the articles collected here suggest new models of interdisciplinarity organized around the concept of a \u201ccritical turn\u201d (or \u201csecond wave\u201d) in the Medical Humanities.[1]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Rita Charon, MD, PhD, founder and director of the Narrative Medicine Program at Columbia University in New York, attests to the power of story to transform medicine:<\/p>\n

Stories in medicine are not just for recreation. . . . When I started graduate school in the Department of English at Columbia, years after completing medical school and training, I found what I had been craving: a solid, complex, scholarly explanation for the phenomena that I had been living through as a physician\u2014listening to fragmented, chaotic stories from relative strangers while having the duty to somehow understand their significance. . . . What do I do with the paradoxes, the ambiguities, the contradictory stories from a family member, the gaps in memory, the fact that the stories changed from month to month? What do I do with my own doubt about the meaning of what I am hearing?[2]<\/sup><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We hope that this issue contributes to the conversation by reflecting not only on the power of story to transform medicine, but also on the power of medicine to transform story, particularly story in performance.<\/p>\n

Departing from the point where the personal and the medical narratives meet, this fresh perspective captures the creative border-crossing among the disciplines and \u201c[reorients] the question of experience.\u201d It suggests we move away from a dualist mode of thinking, such as patient\/doctor, humanities\/medicine, or affect\/pragmatism, into \u201ca more ambiguous and risky intellectual space\u201d of osmosis and entanglement.[3]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

The theatre\/performing arts manifold is itself an intergeneric hybrid that has always welcomed such entanglements. The gaze in theatre has been paralleled with the anatomical\/dissecting gaze, while the experience of live theatre\u2013the presence, that is, of living bodies\u2013allows for ample philosophical and medical exploration. Theatre carves out a space for stories, ideas, and bodies to blend and interact in real time and with measurable effect.<\/p>\n

More than a mere instrument at the service of medical training and therapy, \u201cthe aesthetic dimension of an arts-in-health project opens up the potential of the work from a functional transaction to a creative encounter.\u201d[4]<\/sup><\/a> The dialogue of theatre with medicine probes more deeply into the essence of being and sheds light on \u201cthe existential transformation illness brings about.\u201d[5]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Medical procedures and narratives of illness provide rich ground for interdisciplinary collaborations among theatre scholars and practitioners, medical educators, and health professionals. These entanglements fan out in multiple directions: from theoretical and creative explorations on the aesthetics of performance, to new approaches to acting and spectatorship, to ethical medical training, community outreach, and global health; from cultural capital enhancement to social impact and wellbeing.<\/p>\n

Our selection of articles for this issue, therefore, is intended to provide a showcase of all the above: the multiplicity of disciplinary, thematic, and methodological trajectories of the theatre\/medicine encounter from scholars and practitioners around the world.<\/p>\n

Indeed, our project owes its multimodal, multivocal, and multidisciplinary character to our thirteen contributors; to their deep knowledge of their respective fields and their insightful handling of this sensitive subject matter. In his enlightening reading of the topic, Georges Banu, <\/strong>turns to directors as diverse as Warlikowski, Ivo van Hove, Copi, and Castellucci in order to comment on the popularity and the diversified use of the hospital motif in contemporary theatre productions. Evi Prousali<\/strong> follows the latest theoretical trajectories of spectators\u2019 perceptive operations informed by neurophysiology and cognitive sciences to discuss in a most compelling way \u201ca concept of spectatorship which moved away from interpretation, towards a primarily sensory perception.\u201d
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Through an affecting discussion of her solo theatre piece Bladder Interrupted<\/em>: A Self-Story about Cancer<\/em>, Mechele Leon<\/strong> reflects on autobiographical performance of illness, \u201cthe toll of repeating such stories, and the desired end of storytelling.\u201d Drawing on her own innovative performance practice, Alex Mermikides <\/strong>explores the dynamics of the gaze and \u201cthe ability of performance to create complex layered experiences of illness and of medical encounters.\u201d In the same vein of creative experimentation with the intersection of theatre and medicine, Amy Chan <\/strong>and Natalie Cheung<\/strong> look into (post)dramaturgies of light emerging from the intersection of theatre, history, and medicine and evoking \u201creflection on and reassessment of the concepts of medicine, contemporary theatre, and its aesthetics.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Departing from a penetrating interrogation of Modernity in general and modern medicine in particular, Swati Simha <\/strong>draws on childbirth related plays originating in the Global South to appraise the potential of theatre to \u201cstrip modernity of its hegemony.\u201d Drawing on her own family\u2019s history of childbirth, Marcia Zanelatto<\/strong> offers a rare insight into the process of creating her play The Birth Machine<\/em> and confronts the pressing issues of childbirth and health care ethics in Brazil.\u00a0 Sunday Edum<\/strong> turns to the HIV\/AIDS crisis in Africa as portrayed in Tracie Chima Utoh\u2019s play Cauldron of Death<\/em> to contemplate the immense value of this HIV-themed dramatic piece as both a \u201cdictionary of prevention mechanisms\u201d and a \u201chealing balm for victims.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Tracy Bersley<\/strong> proposes a groundbreaking approach to actor training through the use of neurological body maps, suggesting a new understanding of \u201cthe knowledge of and appreciation for all that our brain is doing to maintain our embodied experience and understanding of the world.\u201d \u00a0Elisabeth Hostetter <\/strong>and Melanie Stewart <\/strong>perform an edifying analysis of the pedagogical aspects of the intersection of theatre and medicine manifest in testing medical students\u2019 empathetic capacity and \u201chelp[ing] develop interpersonal aspects of doctor\/patient interactions.\u201d Departing from the critical condition of a medical world where advances in technology threaten to obscure treatment of the human, Serge Ouaknine<\/strong>\u2019s fascinating essay details his hospital-based workshop where physicians learn through theatre exercises how their attitudes, gestures, and words may influence patients to take a more active role in their own healing.<\/p>\n

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Kearsley Stewart, <\/strong>Nehanda Loiseau<\/strong>,\u00a0Jules Odendahl-James<\/strong>,\u00a0Crissi Rainer<\/strong>, and\u00a0Evi Alexopoulos<\/strong> offer an illuminating, hands-on perspective on the seminal role of the humanities and arts in global health training, research, and ethics, hoping to \u201cjumpstart new conversations and productive collaborations\u201d among Theatre\/Arts and Medicine faculties. Finally, in a riveting account of the Social and Community Theatre project that took place at San Giovanni Antica Sede Oncological Hospital in Turin (2006-08), Alberto Pagliarino<\/strong> expounds on the osmotic encounter of the city and the hospital \u201cin the context of a great cathartic ritual.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Our gratitude extends to our editor-in-chief, Professor Savas Patsalidis, for his attentiveness to theatre\u2019s new challenges and ever-expanding frontiers, and to all our contributors for making possible this leap into an exciting new territory. It is our hope that this special issue triggers off yet more issues and collections discussing the theatre\/medicine nexus in the future, thus maintaining the momentum of this engaging dialogue.<\/p>\n

\n

[1]<\/a> Anne Whitehead and Angela Woods, \u201cIntroduction,\u201d in Anne Whitehead and Angela Woods eds., The Edinburgh Companion to the Critical Medical Humanities<\/em> (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2015), p.1.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> https:\/\/kripalu.org\/resources\/storyflow-intersection-literature-and-medicine-rita-charon<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Des Fitzgerald and Felicity Callard, \u201cEntangling the Medical Humanities,\u201d in Anne Whitehead and Angela Woods eds., The Edinburgh Companion to the Critical Medical Humanities<\/em> (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2015), p. 5, 38.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Emma Brodzinski, Theatre in Health and Care <\/em>(Basingstoke, Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), p. 16.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Havi Carel, Phenomenology of Illness<\/em> (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2016), p.14.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

*<\/a>Vinia Dakari<\/strong> is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of English, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, where she also received her BA, MA and PhD degrees in English Language and Literature, American Literature and Culture, and Theatre and Performing Arts Studies respectively.\u00a0She has received awards by\u00a0the Aristotle University Research Committee\u00a0and the Greek State Scholarship Foundation.\u00a0Her current research project involves field observation and data collection and analysis on\u00a0the aesthetics and reception of cancer-related performance in and beyond Greece. She has previously conducted field research at Metaxas Cancer Hospital in Piraeus, Athens. Her doctoral dissertation, titled\u00a0\u201cPerforming Cancer: Toward an Aesthetic of the Unpresentable,\u201d explored the aesthetic aspects of the unpresentability of cancer in performance and its impact on spectators. Her work has been presented at several international conferences and published in peer-reviewed academic journals, such as\u00a0Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine<\/em>,\u00a0Critical Stages\/Sc\u00e8nes Critiques<\/em>, and\u00a0Gramma\/\u0393\u03c1\u03ac\u03bc\u03bc\u03b1 Journal of Theory and Criticism<\/em>, as well as two edited collections. She has taught drama and critical writing courses as well as seminars on cancer narratives, cultural studies, and theatre history. Vinia is the Greek Representative for the Arts Health\u00a0Early Career Research Network (ECRN) and\u00a0regular member of the\u00a0Greek Cancer Society\u2019s\u00a0Centre for Support, Education and Research in Psychosocial Oncology\u00a0Working Group.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

**<\/a>Catherine Rogers<\/strong> is a lecturer in the Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University. She has facilitated Narrative Medicine seminars for clinicians and students at Mt. Sinai, Brooklyn Lutheran, Columbia Presbyterian, and Georgetown University hospitals; at Aristotle University Thessaloniki Schools of English and Medicine; and at conferences such as the biennial International Meeting on Well-Being and Performance in Clinical Practice (Greece). A writer and performer, her plays have been seen at Dixon Place, HERE, Manhattan Theatre Source, and Women\u2019s Project in New York; at Cleveland Public Theatre; at Hyde Park Fronterafest, Public Domain, and Salvage Vanguard in Texas. A recipient of two Fulbright awards to Greece, she taught the creative writing and performance seminars \u201cPerforming (My) World History\u201d and \u201cUnderstanding Illness and Trauma through Narrative.\u201d Her short fiction is published in the Gettysburg Review<\/em>, her plays in Voices<\/em> Made Flesh: Performing Women\u2019s Autobiography <\/em>(U Wisconsin), Historia Calamitatum <\/em>(Salvage Vanguard), and Spontaneous Combustion <\/em>(Theatre Source). Her work also appears in Our Changing Journey to the End: Reshaping Death <\/em>(Praeger) and Ex-centric Narratives: Journal of Anglophone Literature, Culture and Media<\/em> (HELAAS). As Assistant Professor Humanities, she taught creative and expository writing at New York University. Catherine was a James A. Michener Fellow at the University of Texas where she earned the MFA in Playwriting. She holds the MS in Narrative Medicine from Columbia. Catherine is a member of the Dramatists Guild.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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