Performance, Medicine and the Human

Performance and medicine are now converging in unprecedented ways. London’s theatres reveal an appetite for medical themes - John Boyega is subjected to medical experiments in Jack Thorne’s Woycek, while Royal National Theatre produces a novel musical about cancer. At the same time, performance-makers seek to improve our health, using dance to increase mobility for those living with Parkinson’s disease or performance magic as physiotherapy for children with paraplegia. Performance, Medicine and the Human surveys this emerging field, providing case studies based on the author’s own experience of devising medical performances in collaboration with cancer patients, biomedical scientists and healthcare educators.

Examining contemporary medical performance reveals an ancient preoccupation, evident in the practices of both theatre and healing, with the human. Like medicine, theatre puts the human on display in order to understand and, perhaps, alleviate the suffering inherent to the human condition. Medical practice constitutes a sort of theatre in which doctors, nurses and patients perform their humaneness and humanity. This insight has much to offer at a time when established notions of the human are being radically rethought, partly in response to emerging biomedical knowledge. Performance, Medicine and the Humanargues that contemporary medical performance can shed new light on what it means to be human - and what we mean by the human, the humane, humanism and the humanities - at a time when these notions are being fundamentally rethought. Its insights are relevant to scholars in performance studies, the medical humanities, healthcare education and beyond

Alex Mermikides is Doctoral Programme Leader at Guildhall School of Music & Drama, London, UK. Her research interest is in contemporary performance-making, particularly in relation to interdisciplinary and medical performances. Previous publications include Devising in Process (with Jackie Smart) and Performance and the Medical Body with Gianna Bouchard (Methuen Drama, 2016).