by LYNDSEY WINSHIP
Using the body to heal the body … Underglass, by Clod Ensemble, part of the Performing Medicine project. PHOTO/Manuel Vason
Why are French clowns invading hospitals and should there be dancing in the wards? Meet the performers injecting fresh blood into medical training
Amid hi-tech machines, a blood-smeared body lies on a hospital bed with what looks like a bullethole in its side. It’s a mannequin, but one that sweats, breathes and bleeds. The room feels like the sort of eerily accurate A&E ward you might stray into at a Punchdrunk immersive theatre performance. But this is not a scene set for an audience. Instead, it’s part of a new £500,000 project at St Thomas’ hospital in Londonto train doctors, nurses and paramedics in physical theatre.
Performing Medicine is led by director Suzy Willson and her company Clod Ensemble. She has been working with medical students for a number of years, but this project – funded by Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity – is the first to be embedded in a real hospital, working with frontline staff. Performers will work with the Simulation and Interactive Learning Centre (SaIL) at St Thomas’, which allows doctors, nurses and paramedics to experience emergencies before they have to attend them for real.
“It’s sometimes quite hard to get doctors to realise there’s an art to medicine,” says the centre’s Dr Peter Jaye. “Because to some extent it’s been pummelled out by science.”
Walking into SaIL, you immediately find yourself in a theatre of sorts. The hospital already uses sets and actors to train staff. Now, Performing Medicine will teach body language and communication skills through clowning, mime, and dance techniques. Willson will teach “the neutral mask”, a technique for getting actors to notice their own physical habits that she learned at the Lecoq theatre school in Paris. They’ll also work with touch – important for staff who have such an intimate relationship with patients, and improvisation – an overlooked skill in medicine, says Willson.
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