ARDEO: Exploring Medical Humanities through Theatre
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This interview is with Nicole Damari, a UNC–Chapel Hill medical student who helped craft research questions and took and transcribed copious notes for Lawton’s creation of ARDEO.
Would you tell readers a bit about yourself and your area of study?
I am a third-year medical student, which means I’ve just moved from a classroom-based to a hospital-based education. I am undecided about specialty—it’s all fascinating—but whatever I choose, I will find a way to incorporate population health and health-justice advocacy.
What was your role on ARDEO? How did you contribute to the research and development of the play?
I was involved in the interviews with [the North Carolina Jaycee] Burn Center staff and former patients. I tried to bring a medical perspective to the research process, but since I was still early in my education, I think it manifested more as a medical-student brand of inquisitiveness, which led me to ask questions about the patient/provider relationship, the patient/diagnosis relationship, and the experience of being ill or injured.
What inspired you to explore the intersection of medicine and the arts?
Theatre has been a big part of my life since I was 8-years old. My fascination with medicine began around the same time. Since then, I was repeatedly told that I would have to choose between the two. As I got older and presumably closer to this imaginary fork in the road, it became harder and harder to imagine giving up either passion entirely. Sometime near the end of high school I had a theatre teacher who introduced me to the idea that the arts can exist as both a beautiful end in and of themselves and also as a means to some other end. That idea is what finally made me realize that my loves for medicine and the arts were not competing, but two sides of the same coin. I am intellectually fascinated by how we function as human beings—molecularly and socially—and I am fulfilled by helping people achieve better health both physically and emotionally. That framing has shaped how I interact with both fields, and why I continue to pursue projects born out of the intersection of the two.
In your experience, what is the benefit to medical students exploring the arts and vice versa? Would you encourage your classmates to take part in a project like this?
Yes. I think medical students are often under the impression that medicine is a science, and I disagree. Medicine is an exercise in the application of science. More specifically, it’s an application of science to a world where the variables are complex and confounded and cannot be controlled. I think the more opportunities we have to evaluate health through different lenses, the better we will be as physicians. The arts provide an incredible opportunity to do this, but I might even suggest that medical students find ways to explore any field they are drawn to but have been told is not “medical” or “health-related.” Having additional academic paradigms is rarely negative. [End Page E-9]
What is your greatest takeaway from working on ARDEO?
On a personal level, ARDEO was a sign that, even in medical school, I can exist in both medical and artistic spaces. Beyond that, my biggest takeaway was that there are aspects of health and illness that are best understood from outside the medical model. As I pursue a broad knowledge base in disease, diagnosis, and treatment, it’s important not to stop actively engaging with issues like stigma, suffering, and social context.
What is one thing you hope readers/audiences who experience ARDEO to know?
I hope the reality resonates with them. I don’t just mean the play drew from lived experiences; I mean that the social dimension of illness and injury that ARDEO explores is truly, deeply real. For folks outside of healthcare, I hope the play prompts thoughts about stigma, the...
