The biomedical ethics and humanities department of the University Medical school used ancient Greek theater last night to demonstrate the emotional problems that accompany death.
The show, titled "End of Life," is part of a series of programs sponsored by the department in its continuous "Medical Center Hour" efforts to connect medicine and society.
End of Life founder Bryan Doerries said his motivation for creating this show was to popularize death in society as being as acceptable as birth.
"I wanted to create a forum where people who were engaged with process of dying could be heard," he said.
Marcia Day Childress, director of programs in humanities for the department, said the purpose of the program was to "talk about a subject that often isn't talked about in public, which is the experience of witnessing pain and suffering of a fellow being."
The play consisted of two miniature drama presentations of segments of Sophocle's tragedies, "The Women of Trachis" and "Philoctetes". Both segments contained the theme of human pain and suffering, in addition to showing the perspectives of the non-afflicted. Following the acts, a panel of four University Medical Center employees shared their thoughts on the play, as well as their own personal experiences with death.
The discussion then opened to members of the audience as a forum to share their own personal experiences and thoughts about both the plays and their own emotional problems related to terminal illness.
Upon hearing dramatic expressions of emotion, audience members feel more open to expressing themselves, Childress said. The voices, language, sound and poetry of Athenian theater "unlocks people and evokes in them some memories [and] emotions that they feel compelled to speak about."
Graduate Nursing student Heather Saxby, who studies in the Clinical Nurse Leader program, said she felt the event created an interesting environment to focus on the issues her program discusses so frequently. "It was a great way to get people talking about [human suffering] all together [from] different interdisciplinary areas," she said.
Such events also help Nursing students prepare for the reality of caring for those in suffering, said Graduate Nursing student Mollie Bush, who is also studying in the CNL program. "I think it provides a safe environment to have the conversation but at the same time feel the discomfort," Bush said.
Today the program will be held again as part of the third-year Nursing and Medical students' curriculum. Students will collaborate "to talk about play and what stories ... they [have] taken away from their year [with hands-on hospital experience]," Childress said.
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