Responding to a need among health humanities scholars and clinicians to grapple with medicine's longstanding relationship to theatre, this open access book argues there are deep connections between theatre and medicine which guide transformative insights in both disciplines.

While contemporary theatre has embraced its links to the healing arts, doctors and patients may prefer to forget the relationship between theatre and medicine, but this book argues that understanding the performative aspects of caregivers' and patients' roles can actually help improve medical outcomes. It features chapters and interviews not only from scholars in the medical and health humanities and theatre, performance, and disability studies, but also from key stakeholders such as doctors, medical educators, disability activists, home caregivers and patients. Moving beyond prevailing applications of the arts in narrative medicine and medical education, the volume maintains that patients' and doctors' performances cannot be understood in isolation, nor does interpretation happen in only one direction.

It encompasses multiple genres of theatre and performance-spoken drama, performance art, object performance, physical theatre, and medical performances on television. The first two sections examine performative aspects of the clinical encounter. The third and fourth sections explore the potential and the danger of theatre's healing power. By analyzing the ensemble drama of illness, by proposing enhancements to medicine's “hidden curriculum” through role-play, dramaturgy, and actor-training in theatre and social performance theory, and by bringing patients into the conversation, the book offers rigorous research and real-world benefits.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com.