Can Theatre Be More Real Than Real Life?
Louise Larkinson York St John University
1) According to Oscar Wilde the above statement is sometimes true.
I work as a lecturer in a Faculty of Health & Life Science and am involved in the training of
health professionals. Part of this task involves me in trying to prepare them for dealing with
people experiencing great human distress - the rawness of the human condition. How can
they develop the necessary skills of empathy, compassion, reflection and sensitivity to meet
this task and still look after themselves? Textbooks are of little help in this matter as they
strive to be systematic and generalist in their approach.
In view of this - the challenge I set myself was to draw on the Arts particularly theatre & drama
to attempt to engage students in the experience of the ‘other’. Though I have experience of
theatre and am a qualified dramatherapist I have not used it as a tool in a higher educational
context before. The ethos of the faculty is quite scientific in orientation so I was going
against the mainstream, but to me the need for a different kind of approach was essential.
I initially undertook an extra – curricula research project to explore how the way of working
I proposed could complement theoretical learning.
2) This project involved working with a group of students who studied the life of a character
from plays focusing on health, illness and disability themes . The plays included the following:
Molly Sweeney (main theme : visual impairment & loss of identity)
Duet for One (main theme: impact of the condition of multiple sclerosis on a young woman)
A cream cracker under the settee (main theme: isolation & loneliness of the elderly)
4.48 Psychosis (main theme: serious mental illness, fragmentation of the personality and suicide)
Tissue (main theme: breast cancer in a young woman and consequent problems with self image)
Whose life is it anyway (main theme: medical ethics and patient choice)
A day in the death of Joe Egg (main theme: the tensions & pressures of caring for a disabled child)
Memory of Water (main theme: grief, bereavement, and family relationships)
The students selected a character and an extract from the play and were encouraged to explore the characters life as deeply and richly as possible. Throughout the process I conducted taped interviews with the students to discuss their engagement. Sometimes they were asked to speak from the perspective of the character (hot seating) and sometimes from their own perspective. The project culminated in two performances to staff and students of the faculty and was received very positively. I also collected some very useful research data on the use of this kind of experiential learning, but it is not within the remit of this story to discuss the findings in detail.
As a result of this work I now have a teaching fellowship C4C CETL : Collaborating for Creativity. My remit is integrating the Arts into the curriculum for the health professional. And for the last 2 years I have immersed myself in this process and have particularly introduced the use of theatre and drama into the curriculum as a vehicle for exploring relevant issues around health, illness and disability. This has included using a very good local amateur theatre group to bring in and present some of the dramatic material as not all students want to be involved in acting and it is not always appropriate. But they all do fully engage with the workshops that follow small theatre performances and the feedback has been mainly very good. Sometimes a lecture on the theme of the theatre piece follows the performance and students appreciate receiving the content in 2 very different formats.
One student said ‘the pieces of theatre made situations we might meet in practice more real than a textbook does. Three dimensional - with emotions, thought, and feelings.’
3) This experience has:
· Boosted my self confidence
· Energised and excited me
· Provided me with very different encounters with students, allowing engagement at a deeper level, whilst respecting boundaries
· Shown me the Importance of risk taking and moving out of one’s comfort zone
· Shown me that the Arts and in this instance theatre can provide a safe and containing environment for exploring the human condition within a health arena.
4) Words to describe experience:
challenging, powerful, absorbing, unexpected, creative, developmental, scary, exhilarating, anxiety provoking, joyful. lonely
Concepts:
· Theatre as a mirror
· Discovering empathy through walking in another’s footsteps
· Participation in a fictional reality enabling closer understanding of other realities
5) Principles and lessons to be drawn
· The importance in Higher Education to provide for students a range of different
styles of learning
· To supplement cognitive and intellectual thinking with opportunities for emotional
engagement and experiential learning
· To challenge the status quo
· To trust one’s passions and mobilise them
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