It’s 12:06 p.m. as students and faculty members gather in one of the newer classrooms of Penn State Abington. Some were picking their forks at the cantaloupe and honeydew on their plates, others drew their eyes and mouths to the people surrounding them, asking who they were and why they were there, and a final few were still as a rock, staring towards the front and waiting for the show to begin.
Many appeared to not know about the event, yet from front to back, the room was filled with faculty and students who shared a common interest–art.
The show was called “The Human Condition: Readings and Performances.” The navy blue pamphlet given to all described this event as one that was open to everyone to watch. The performers, on the other hand, were people who had any type of health condition, disability or traumatic health event (physically or mentally) that they have lived or lived through. The belief behind this event was to let out this story as a former or current patient helps create stronger bonds between medical professionals, families, and the patients themselves. The pamphlet described the goal of combining art and theater with health science as a way to “increase understanding between people on ‘both sides of the stethoscope.’”
For many patients, a good story isn’t always told in the traditional manner. This fact is what allowed there to be patients that were artists of all different kinds that performed that afternoon.
Be it theater, painting, dance, storytelling or reciting poems, all the students shared their art and, in turn, shared theirs or another’s story. And each story unveiled the human condition.
The first performance of the hour was about a patient who had battled with drugs. This led to an accident because of irresponsibility and then, finally, a life change. The skit’s dialogue displayed cultural stereotypes that stood in his way. The skit presented the consequences of the lifestyle this patient lived, such as homelessness. In the end, he became a teacher who was able to recognize and stop others from going down the same path.
Another performance (by a dancer) exhibited every emotion through every limb of her body as she danced the story of a patient in a coma. In- and out-of-body experiences overtook the character and her movements changed as her life perspective changed.
Later, one student recited a poem (written by someone else). She spoke about the organs in her body. She screamed out for her body through a poem that stood up for a less popular choice, to not donate her organs after death at all.
As the audience became quieter and quieter, slowly sucked into how personal some stories were getting, a student stood and chose to read a story she wrote herself. Intelligently written and with raw emotion in her word choices, she spoke about an ever-changing moment caused by a car crash. The story was told in a comical manner, but spoke of the after trauma and anxiety she dealt with mentally as she slowly regained her health physically.
At the end of the hour, the paintings were presented. One painter spoke about finding an urn at a common family vacation spot that she painted about. The audience “ooed,” “aahed” and gasped when they realized that many paintings in the room were not professionally done and hung for interior design, but were painted by the students themselves. There were paintings of blood, hearts, brains and the natural world that represented the mental and physical human condition as well.
And then, it stopped.
The audience’s minds continued to run but the stage had emptied. Each audience member asked about and reflected on their own human condition. Until the next art festival in the health humanities begins, hopefully new stories that are expressed in new ways will once again increase the bond on “both sides of the stethoscope.”
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