2024-25 UTM-JHI Annual Seminar: Medicine and theatre (2) Narrative Medicine Workshop
When and Where
Description
Guest panelists: Sarah Granger (actor) and Nick Green (actor & playwright)
This seminar will feature a panel discussion with artists who have worked with themes of medicine, illness, and wellness on stage (e.g., Nick Green, playwright of Casey and Diana [2023]). Student co-applicants will act as interviewers. Lunan Zhao, a member of the core group and Resident Doctor (family medicine) at U of T’s Faculty of Medicine, will also join the discussion as an additional interlocutor.
[NB: As it is difficult for medical students to attend any extra-curricular events during the week, this particular seminar MAY be scheduled not for a Friday but a Saturday afternoon.]
Lunch will be available from 12:30 p.m. onwards
About the Series
The recent pandemic has made it abundantly clear that scientific insights must be communicated clearly and effectively so that the public understands and ‘buys in’ by changing its behavioural practices collectively. Persuasive social theatre and suggestive performance techniques are crucial parts of scientific communication strategies — the sciences need the theatre! This need for ‘self-theatricalization’ will only grow in the future, as most key sciences in the 21st century will be ‘embodied sciences.’
On the other hand, there is (and continues to be) a rich and important history of playwrights putting science and scientists on stage, thereby creating interfaces and highly visible public discourses at the intersection of society, religion, politics, knowledge creation, and ethics.
In this series, we’ll examine some of the manifold modes in which sciences and theatre-and-performance art continue to interact. We’ll explore key areas of contact between science/technology and theatre/performance; which sciences and scientists currently attract theatrical interest; where and how scientific knowledge begins and ends — and who needs to know it; and how theatre and performance can best contribute to such re-conceptualized ‘scientific knowledge.’
