{"id":429,"date":"2018-05-17T14:40:09","date_gmt":"2018-05-17T14:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/17\/?p=429"},"modified":"2023-03-19T10:32:53","modified_gmt":"2023-03-19T10:32:53","slug":"i-and-you-becomes-i-am-you-the-audiences-gaze-in-contemporary-medical-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/17\/i-and-you-becomes-i-am-you-the-audiences-gaze-in-contemporary-medical-performance\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cI and you\u201d Becomes \u201cI am you\u201d: The Audience\u2019s Gaze in Contemporary Medical Performance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Alex Mermikides<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Abstract: <\/strong>This paper explores the capacity of theatre to complicate, multiply and extend the dynamic of looking and caring, as this is reflected in two recent productions, devised by the author. Bloodlines<\/em> (2012-16) follows a patient undergoing treatment for life-threatening blood cancer, subjecting him to an anatomical strip-tease through the use of medical images with a \u201csurprisingly emotional\u201d effect (audience response to performance at the Science Museum, London). Careful<\/em> (in development, since 2016) follows five over-stretched nurses as they care for their patients, putting the audience in the position of those patients. The piece allows subject positions to be blurred, so that \u201cI and you becomes I am you\u201d (Spiro et al. 1993).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keywords: <\/strong>medical performance, spectatorship, medical gaze, empathy<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Introduction: Looking and Caring in Medicine and Theatre<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Both theatre and medicine are characterised by a dynamic of looking at and caring for others: the audience attends to the performer, the medical professional attends to the patient. However, despite this shared orientation, theatrical and medical looking tend to be starkly distinguished. In historical, sociological and cultural studies of medicine that form part of a Foucauldian legacy, the \u201cmedical gaze\u201d is construed as an objectifying, even violent, force. For,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

to look in order to know, to show in order to teach, is not this a tacit form of violence, all the more abusive for its silence, upon the sick body that demands to be comforted, not displayed? Can pain be a spectacle? (Foucault 2003: 102).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

For Foucault, this gaze reaches its most oppressive form with the emergence of dissection as a clinical practice. Today, it is medical imaging that is equated with a similar anatomo-clinical way of seeing that, in its ever-closer attention to the interior of the body, divorces the medic from the patient and her subjectivity.[1]<\/sup><\/a> For scholar Devan Stahl, who lives with multiple sclerosis, the medical scan \u201cparticipates in medicine\u2019s cold culture of abstraction, objectification and mandated normativity,\u201d so that \u201cpatients seek medical care in order to be made whole, only to have themselves fragmented and objectified by the physician\u201d (2013: 53-5). By contrast, \u201cthe peculiar acts of looking demanded in theatres\u201d (Johnson 2012: 22) are often conceived of as empathic, a vehicle through which the spectator takes in the subjective experience as well as the bodily composition of those she looks upon. Looking enables a process of identification: of imaginative and vicarious participation in the suffering of another and, with this, the possibility of catharsis. This illustrated essay explores how such medical and theatrical gazes might be blended and blurred in an emerging area of cultural practice that I follow Kuppers in calling \u201cmedical performance,\u201d one that surrounds and engages with \u201cmedical systems and bodies\u201d and the \u201csocial and personal realities that open up\u201d in response to these (2007: 1).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bleeker conceives of theatre as a \u201cvision machine,\u201d as an event that organizes \u201cthe relation between those seeing and what they see, mediating in a specific relationship between the two\u201d (2011: 2). Here, I reveal how these relations and relationships were orchestrated in two medical performances: Bloodlines <\/em>(2012-16) and Careful<\/em> (ongoing since 2016). These works, both devised by the author, play with the equivalence that might be drawn between the subjects and objects of theatrical and medical gazes. In other words, they ascribe to their audience members the subject position of the medic or patient, inviting them to adopt a certain way of seeing in relation to the patient or medic characters that they look upon. In doing so, they seek to complicate dichotomized characterisations of medical and theatrical looking.  Moreover, acts of displaying and looking at others in medical performance are also suggestive of how we construe the \u201cspecific relationship\u201d between medicine and theatre. Discussion of these two small-scale medical performances opens up to larger questions about how the distinct disciplines of theatre and medicine might be oriented to each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Examining the Patient: Bloodlines<\/em> as Pathographic Performance<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Bloodlines<\/em>, by Chimera, with performer Adam Kirkham as \u201cthe patient.\u201d Photo: Anna Tanczos<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Bloodlines<\/em> (2012-16) is a performance-lecture that integrates theatre, dance, visual projections and music, to track a patient undergoing treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a deadly blood cancer. Although not strictly autobiographical, it draws on the personal experience of supporting my brother through diagnosis, and the long and high-risk treatment for leukemia and of acting as his bone marrow donor (2007-08). Milton Mermikides, a music composer and researcher, subsequently created the sound tracks for both performances discussed here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because of this autobiographical aspect, Bloodlines<\/em> can be situated within the field of pathographic performance delineated by Brodzinski, in which the presentations of the once\/still sick patient on stage, offers insights into \u201cthe patient experience from the standpoint of those undergoing\/having undergone treatment\u201d (2016: 97). The practice exploits the analogous relation between patient and performer as the object of the gaze. One of Brodzinski\u2019s case studies is performance artist and cancer activist Brian Lobel, who describes solo performance as \u201cthe perfect metaphor for being sick: one body was on stage, isolated and vulnerable\u201d (2016: 88). Here, the role of patient and performer are elided. Likewise, the spectator in works such as Lobel\u2019s BALL<\/em> assumes the subject position of the physician surveying the medical \u201ccase\u201d presented before her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Brodzinski, pathographic performance promotes a process of empathic engagement, it issues \u201ca call to the audience to engage in an exploration of suffering and shared sense of vulnerability\u201d (2016: 97). The assumption, I believe, is that this aspect of empathy is excluded from the medical encounter it mirrors. However, my premise in creating Bloodlines<\/em> was that such empathic identification with the patient is inherent<\/em> to medical looking. This standpoint derives from the medics I met during Milton\u2019s year-long treatment, and during the making of Bloodlines<\/em> (which involved close collaboration with medics at three hospitals.[2]<\/sup><\/a>) I was particularly struck by witnessing pathologists diagnosing and monitoring patients with serious haematological disorders, for they showed and described strong affective responses towards people known to them only through bone marrow biopsies and hospital numbers. In this case, observation of the patient\u2019s bodily composition did not necessarily blind the viewer from their subjectivity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Likewise, in the medical educational contexts where Bloodlines<\/em> was sometimes performed,[3]<\/sup><\/a> it became clear that showing, teaching and knowing about \u201ccases\u201d did not necessarily preclude feeling, nor empathetic engagement with suffering. In Bloodlines<\/em>, then, the spectator is offered the vantage point of the medic (in the first scene, they are addressed as though they are medical students), looking upon a patient who is \u201con stage, isolated and vulnerable.\u201d Through the technologies of imaging and didactic discourse, the spectator is granted the pathologist\u2019s or anatomist\u2019s ability to see inside the body. And, yet, these \u201cmedical\u201d ways of seeing and knowing enable an empathic response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Scene 1: Dr Law explains the process of haematopoiesis to first year medical students. Dr Law is performed by Rebecca Law (a former doctor). From a performance at the Rose Theatre, Kingston 2014. Photo: Anna Tanczos,<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Scene 2: a T-lymphocyte mutates and begins to proliferate. Photo: Anna Tanczos<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Scene 3: a bone marrow biopsy. The purple cells are malignant. Image by Anna Tanczos using anonymized sample<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Video 1<\/h6>\n\n\n\n
Video 2<\/h6>\n\n\n\n