This past year marked the tenth anniversary of the Department of Medical Humanities' Medical Readers Theater program. The program began in January 1989 when four medical students gave a performance of "A Face of Stone," a short story by physician/writer William Carlos Williams, at the Humber House in downtown Greenville, NC. Since that time, students have given performances before general, professional, and academic audiences at public libraries, schools, universities, hospitals, as well as medical society, health group, and civic club meetings.
Medical Readers Theater is a genre of theater particularly well suited to busy medical students who have little time to devote to extra-curricular activities. Performers do not memorize their lines, do not move much on stage, and do not wear costumes or makeup.
The actors sit before the audience and read their characters' parts. It is the audience's job to imagine the action, just as one would do when listening to a drama on the radio. "Theater-of-the-mind" is the way Artistic Director Janice V. Schreiber describes Medical Readers Theater. Greg Watkins, a Greenville actor and writer, adapts the short stories used in the program for a theater format.
Performances and Discussions
Discussions among the audience and cast members take place after each Medical Readers Theater performance. It is these discussions, not the performances, which constitute the heart of the program. The discussions allow medical students to meet local folks and hear their thoughts on crucial issues like doctor/patient relationships, assisted suicide, chronic illness care, women and minorities in medicine, and organ transplantation. Audience members enjoy meeting future physicians and talking to them about their views on ethical and social issues in medicine.
An entire Medical Readers Theater program lasts about an hour. Discussions are usually moderated by Todd Savitt, Ph.D., an historian of medicine in the Department of Medical Humanities and coordinator of the program since its inception, or by John Moskop, Ph.D., an ethicist in the Department and Director of the Bioethics Center.
In 1998, students gave performances of Richard Selzer's "Follow Your Heart," and "Fetishes," as well as William Carlos Williams' "The Use of Force." Performances occurred throughout North Carolina in places such as Greenville, Farmville, Plymouth, and Nashville. At the start of this eleventh year of performances, the medical students will be joined this spring semester for the first time by ECU nursing students as cast members for performances of Selzer's "Imelda."
Medical Readers Theater in North Carolina was started by Nancy King, J.D., a professor in the Department of Social Medicine at University of North Carolina (UNC)/Chapel Hill, but Savitt has been running the program at the ECU School of Medicine since its inception. Over the years, the program has received funding from the North Carolina Humanities Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the ECU School of Medicine.
Miss Evers' Boys
This year, Savitt worked with Michael Cauthen, an African-American Studies professor at UNC/Greensboro, Ursula Robinson, from the theater program at North Carolina A & T, and John Gulley, from the Theater Department at UNC/Greensboro on a special Readers Theater production of David Feldshuh's "Miss Evers' Boys." The play, which was produced by arrangement with Dramatists Play Service, Inc., had a cast of professional actors from the Greensboro area.
"Miss Evers' Boys" is a story based on the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment conducted on African-Americans in Tuskegee, Alabama from the 1930s to the 1970s. The special production, which was performed at several locations in Greenville and Greensboro, was sponsored by the African-American Studies Program at UNC/Greensboro, in cooperation with the Theater Department at UNC/Greensboro, the ECU Ledonia Wright African-American Cultural Center, the Department of Medical Humanities at ECU School of Medicine, and the Schools of Nursing at UNC/Greensboro and North Carolina A & T State University.
The production of "Miss Evers' Boys" was particularly well received. Not only were the performances well attended (crowds ranged in size from thirty to three hundred people), but coordinators from the hosting institutions expressed their appreciation for the performances.
In an interview with the Greenville Daily Reflector about "Miss Evers' Boys," Ms. Taffye Benson Clayton, Director of the Ledonia Wright Center, praised the production for "bringing together the various segments of the community to look at and then talk about something that is quite difficult and, for many, quite painful."
"A lot of times people don't want to go there [talk about Tuskegee] because it is a difficult discussion," Ms. Clayton said. But she praised the Medical Readers Theater production for helping people to do "the hard work of dealing with the issues." For more information on Medical Readers Theater, including possible performances in your town or hospital, contact Todd Savitt at (252) 744-2797.
