The Patient Performer: Embodied Pathography in Contemporary Productions

Brodzinski, Emma

doi:10.5040/9781472570819.ch-006

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“…Initiated in seminal studies by Frank 9 and Charon, 10 this field remains relevant to discussions of patient experiences and the expression of these through various art forms ranging from the graphic novel 11 to performance. 12 Indeed, a recent chapter by performance scholar Brodzinski 13 posits performance created by ‘patient-performers’ as a way of actualising Frank's emphasis on embodiment—stories ‘told not just about the body but through it’ (2016, p. 3) by literally putting the body of the patient centre stage. More broadly, this article pertains to the ongoing project to problematise what Nettleton summarises as the ‘biomedical model’ of illness, 14 a project founded by Foucault's seminal study of ‘the clinic’, 15 which has been taken up, in various ways, within cultural studies, 16 sociology 17 18 and anthropology.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Medical performance and the ‘inaccessible’ experience of illness: an exploratory study

Weitkamp

Mermikides

2016

Med Humanities

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We report a survey of audience members' responses (147 questionnaires collected at seven performances) and 10 in-depth interviews (five former patients and two family members, three medical practitioners) to bloodlines, a medical performance exploring the experience of haematopoietic stem-cell transplant as treatment for acute leukaemia. Performances took place in 2014 and 2015. The article argues that performances that are created through interdisciplinary collaboration can convey otherwise ‘inaccessible’ illness experiences in ways that audience members with personal experience recognise as familiar, and find emotionally affecting. In particular such performances are adept at interweaving ‘objectivist’ (objective, medical) and ‘subjectivist’ (subjective, emotional) perspectives of the illness experience, and indeed, at challenging such distinctions. We suggest that reflecting familiar yet hard-to-articulate experiences may be beneficial for the ongoing emotional recovery of people who have survived serious disease, particularly in relation to the isolation that they experience during and as a consequence of their treatment.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%