13 Feb, 12 | by Ayesha Ahmad
Activating Theatre: people participating, performing politics
A practice-based symposium examining how theatre and performance work to change people and society
Tuesday 6 March 2012, Stage@leeds Building, University of Leeds
18 Aug, 11 | by James Poskett
Telling the Patient’s Story details a theatre company’s attempts to develop medical students’ case presentation skills. Workshops, covering everything from improvisation, personal monologues and body language, had a marked effect on the students, with all participants agreeing that the training improved their delivery of patient histories.
http://mh.bmj.com/content/37/1/18.abstract
So, the arts and humanities can help medical students improve their case presentation skills thereby, in theory, benefitting future patients. Sounds like convincing evidence of the value of the humanities within the medical curriculum. Everyone happy? Well, not quite. One student offered the following feedback:
“[There is] too much focus on how this relates to medicine. We will realise that later.”
21 Jun, 11 | by Deborah Kirklin
Living in a big city isn’t all fun and games. The number of young people killed and injured using knives and guns in London over recent years being just one, particularly disturbing example. But there is one huge advantage of living within travelling distance of many big cities, and certainly one like London: the positive cornucopia of theatres, museums and galleries within tantalising reach. Some of these have wonderful online collections, thereby bringing their pleasures to audiences far and wide ( http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/). Others tour either nationally or occasionally internationally, although their favours are still only conferred on the fortunate few. And it is with this latter truth in mind that I apologise upfront to those of who who won’t make it to see Simon Callow being Shakespeare, but something this good is simply impossible to keep to yourself.
26 Jul, 10 | by Deborah Kirklin
Cheltenham’s ‘Medicine Unboxed’ is a series of conferences for NHS staff, exploring a view of medicine that aspires to more than the technical and which necessarily refers to values, uncertainty and human understanding – to art as much as science. This year, in partnership with the Times Cheltenham Literature Festival, we engage the interface between medicine, language and stories. more…
16 May, 10 | by Deborah Kirklin
This write up will share the experiences of an educational intervention with a difference. It narrates the story from a medical school located at the southern tip of the Indian peninsula. For the annual day celebrations of this school, the faculty used to host a cultural show as a mark of their love and reverence to the students. The cultural performances used to take different forms, ranging from songs, skits, dances and a lot more. On this year’s annual day, they decided to perform something unique. The movement was spearheaded by microbiologists who incidentally had many of their members involved in medical education research and cultural coordination committee. A meeting was convened and the medium of theatre and dance was finalized to depict certain educational themes. As usual, the process gained momentum just two days before the event. more…
26 Feb, 10 | by Deborah Kirklin
Intense and challenging, the National’s recent interpretation of “Pains of Youth” (which ran from October 2009 – January 2010) at the Cottesloe, under the skilful direction of Katie Mitchell, has the audience gripped throughout. It is a fast-paced play about medical students in Vienna in the early 1920s – their fraught, turbulent psyches trying to make sense of a world that was indeed itself troubled and traumatised in the aftermath of the First World War. The seven discontented and conflicting characters, entangled in searching, questioning, taunting relationships with one another, play out the diagnosis of ‘sickness/disease’ (‘Frankheit’ from the original title in German) that has been here attributed to youth (der Jugend) whilst serving as a metaphor for the sickness in society at large. more…
4 Sep, 08 | by Deborah Kirklin
There are some plays that leave you, quite literally, breathless with awe. Osage County is one of them. At 3 hours and 20 minutes, this remarkable play is longer than average, and so it’s a tribute to the brilliance of the script, staging, direction and acting that it nevertheless rushes by. Watching Osage County in New York this summer, I can’t have been the only member of the audience who would have happily stayed put, there and then, to watch it all over again.
Sex, drugs, and a dysfunctional family to rival any Tennessee Williams gave us, are all on offer in this Pulitzer and Tony Award®winning American play. Written by Tracy Letts and directed by Anna D. Shapiro, Osage County comes to London from Broadway for just 8 weeks. Its reputation precedes it so doubtless it will sell out fast.
So, if you’re lucky enough to be nearby, visit www.nationaltheatre.org.uk and book your tickets fast.
See you there!
Medical Humanities
An international peer review journal for health professionals and researchers in medical humanities. Visit site
