What Part Theatre in the Alchemy of Health? Blog 53

Namaste!

A lot of things have come together synergistically for me this weekend around some key challenges and questions that were posed to me last week. 

On the surface an invitation from a transformational NHS leader to a conference hosted in the building of an international drug company may not seem to connect too directly to making theatre! And yet of course, our health is at the centre of our lives and the arts are in there too in our well being. Its a natural marriage.

Its perhaps only when we suddenly or unexpectedly find ourselves or a loved one debilitated by a disease or a diagnosis that we understand the very thing we have taken for granted until that point - our health. I include in this of course both physical and mental health. These moments change us forever. 

My dear friend Amari teased me last week about the blog about the NHS being boring in parts! I cannot disavow her of this, but its often these apparently disconnected and possibly apparently unconnected experiences in every day working life that in fact give rise to new creative ideas for our work. Her prompting of course did what it always does and got me thinking in different ways about hospitals, GPs and the whole experience of being a patient. As a health professional Amari has shared a few of her observations and experiences of the Health system with me over the years and I have a few recent ones of my own. Not all very positive.

By chance I also spent some time yesterday talking to a dearly loved relative who is currently in hospital following a bone marrow transplant. I sent him a text to check in and he called me back from his isolation ward. 

We had our usual style of conversation, based on growing up together, years of closeness and a certain shared poetic geekiness when we were kids. We have always laughed a lot and yesterday was no exception in spite of the darkness of his situation. Our conversation ranged from talking about the chemotherapy and the 25 horse pills he has to swallow every day to an article about Chekhov's sexual proclivity he was reading in the Guardian review! 

Peter (not his real name) had his bone marrow infusion 12 days ago and at the moment has no white blood cells. His donor was a 23 year old German man. Apparently in Germany the Health Service is very proactive about marrow donation and he was able to get a good match.

He also happens to be a GP, so his understanding of what he can expect in his treatment is acute. He is hoping that the stem cells will take and that his white blood count will increase from 0 to 2 over the next few days. 


Having explained this to me, he went on to describe the nature of his days, a lot of sleep and walks up and down the corridor. In a matter of fact manner he says the medication is pretty grim and makes him feel sick much of the time. But he also tells me that he is never bored in spite of being stuck in a sterile room. He reads a lot  - a great deal of poetry as he always has. His mind is active and he takes solace from entering deeply into his own internal creative landscape and interior life.

Peter would possibly be called brave by most people. I am not sure he would relate to such a label. He is just where he is and is still curious and deeply in love with life of course. So we travel from poetry to food. He regales me with stories of school dinner type meals, smells that make his nausea even worse. The lack of vitality in the food is hard to tolerate. So with great love Peter's wife cooks wholesome and alive food for him. She brings it in when she can. Sadly she has had a cold for the past three weeks so has not been able to visit him. As we finished our conversation, he was excitedly looking forward to her imminent arrival laden with home made soup and other sensual goodies. 

So although I had no expectation of this Peter gave me the insight that I needed to think about how we can make some theatre work that tells this type of human story in the context of the NHS.

People in extremis are too busy getting through every day, dealing with the pain and uncertainty - abrupted in theirs lives for a period, and not sure if life will ever be the same again. But we as theatre makers have the gift to take such an experience and forge a new work with it. I am so grateful to Peter for his candour and humour. I plan to visit him this week.

There is a curious synergy here too, as I have been listening intently this week to the William Finn Elegies which invite us into those private human moments of love and loss. These stories about mortality and the uniqueness of each human being are simultaneously close and at a distance. Life is such of course that if we haven't already been so, we will all be touched personally at some time by such experiences. 

 Talking to Peter and Amari - I now have a sense of the work we might begin to make around this for the NHS. Also by beautiful symmetry I am going to dinner tomorrow night with a dear friend who is also a GP. I suspect that I might be paying!  

Sober post to start the week - but for me also uplifting thanks to my Sunday chat with Peter. 

Have a good week.