What is it about?
This article aims to explore the required skills and competencies of the actor who works in health-care systems. A narrative inquiry gave the opportunity for participants to elaborate on their understandings of their direct or indirect engagement with theatre in hospitals. Data were collected in the form of ten narrative interviews with experienced actors in hospitals and drama trainees. Inductive thematic analysis of this collection of qualitative data was used to allow findings to emerge from frequent or significant themes inherent in the semi-structured interviews. The study demonstrates a defensible emphasis on key themes, including the predictable professional skills such as acting in participatory dramas, using theatre improvisation and puppetry, and interpersonal skills such as emotional intelligence and empathetic awareness.
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Why is it important?
This article aims to make a difference in the training of the Applied theatre facilitator with regards to their emotional protection and wellbeing when they work in emotionally demanding environments such as hospitals, hospices and clinics. One can’t pour from an empty cup! Actors need support to be able to support others during emotional constrain caused by illness and disability.
Perspectives
The actor in healthcare cares for the audience. Who cares for the actor? Training actors on the predictable and obvious skills of acting and improvisation is not enough to secure a balanced wellbeing for them who decide to work in healthcare. Compassionate fatigue and emotional distress can happen when the actor performs to patients bedside. Other ‘soft’ skills such as Emotional Intelligence and awareness of the self and the audience are important to create aesthetic and emotional distance from overwhelming incidents during performance. Training actors and Applied theatre facilitators to observe, experience, process and deal with emotions efficiently during their interactions with patients, care givers and clinical staff is of immense importance to the process of supporting people in need through theatre.
Persephone Sextou
Newman University Birmingham
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: What does the actor need to perform in health care? Emotional demands, skills and competencies, Applied Theatre Research Socially Engaged Performance, November 2018, Intellect,
DOI: 10.1386/atr.6.2.107_1.
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