Using Theatre to Engage People in Public Health Discourse that Inspires Real-World Change

Abstract

InterAct Theatre Company is a theatre for today’s world, dedicated to producing new and contemporary plays that explore the social, political and cultural issues of our time. The company sees itself as a kind of “public square,” utilizing theatre as a tool to promote civic engagement and stimulate dialogue around the most pressing, complex and compelling issues we face in contemporary society.

In its 24-year history the company has produced numerous plays that explicitly examine issues pertaining to public health, including The Elephant Man by Bernard Pomerance (1989), the tragic true story of John Merrick’s challenges as a creative, British dreamer afflicted with the rare, grotesque and debilitating disease neurofibromatosis; the world premiere of Under Yelena by Buffy Sedlachek (1998), about two Soviet scientists charged with researching the impact of radiation at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant after the infamous meltdown in 1986; the world premiere of Man Measures Man by David Robson (2001), the story of two American Jewish doctors who volunteer to help refugees during the Kosovo war in the mid-1990s; Going to St. Ives by Lee Blessing (2002), about the mother of a brutal Central African dictator (à la Idi Amin) who visits a British eye doctor in London, hoping to solicit poison with which to kill her son for her country’s greater good; Rosemary by Jim O’Connor (2003), about the iconic Kennedy family’s sequestering of the mentally disabled oldest sister, Rosemary; and Blue/Orange by Joe Penhall (2005), the story of two British psychiatrists who battle over the diagnosis and treatment of a schizophrenic man who believes himself to be the son of Idi Amin. Many other InterAct plays have explored ideas and issues more peripherally related to public health, such as poverty, homelessness, rape, adoption, sexuality, violence, war and incarceration.