Of models and mechanisms: towards an understanding of how theatre-making works as an ‘intervention’ in individual health and wellness

ABSTRACT

Growing from a multi-year and multidisciplinary research and applied arts investigative team based in North America, this essay presents a model of how performative engagements contribute to individual behavioural change in wellness practices. To be even more specific, this essay analyses and theorises the mechanisms involved in the application of one particular art form to one particular pre-condition for health. The art form: applied theatre. The pre-condition: attitudes, behaviours and beliefs about healthy eating. The co-authors ask not ‘what can theatre-making do to have a positive effect on health-related attitudes and behaviors?’ but rather ‘how does it do that?’ and offer a model towards answering that question that might satisfy the needs of researchers in both applied theatre and health science.

KEYWORDS:

• Theatre-making
• healthy eating
• cooking classes
• applied theatre
• culturally specific health promotion

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Stephani Etheridge Woodson specialises in community cultural development. Her research and creative interests focus on theatre and performance with, by and for children and youth and community engagement practices. She directs the MFA and Ph.D. in Theatre for Young Audiences at Arizona State University.

Seline Szkupinski Quiroga did graduate work at Johns Hopkins University and a worked at US Public Health Service. She received her doctorate in Medical Anthropology from the University of California at San Francisco. She currently directs the ASU CAMP Scholars programme for the children of migrant farm workers.

Tamara Underiner is Associate Dean for Research for the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, and Associate Professor in the School of Film, Dance and theatre, where she directs the Ph.D. programme in Theatre and Performance of the Americas. Her research is in the area of the arts and cultural well-being.

Robert Farid Karimi mixes humour, rasquatche aesthetics and performance to communicate poems and stories that feed audiences an interactive cross-cultural collision of joy, pop culture and personal history in theatres, grocery stores, backyards and off-Broadway. He has played over 40 characters in his 3 solo shows, from Chicano hipsters, to Disco Jesus, to Iranian women who told him how to be a man to pop star Freddie Mercury.

Notes

1 A quite literal manifestation of this approach is registered in the ‘arts on prescription’ (or ‘arts on referral’) movement in the UK:

Arts on Prescription schemes provide arts and creative activities for participants, usually for people experiencing mental health problems and social isolation. The purpose of such schemes is not to replace conventional therapies but rather to act as an adjunct, helping people in their recovery through creativity and increasing social engagement. (Arts & Health Southwest, nd)

2 Note that when we use the term ‘theatre-making’, we are specifically referencing the active participation of individuals in the studio and performance practices necessary to make theatre happen, not the production or viewing of a formal play.

3 Nutritionist Avril Greenberg introduced Karimi to the Idaho Plate Method, which is associated with improved carbohydrate distribution and glycemic control and weight loss (Raidl et al. 2007). It is easy to teach and easy for individuals to grasp as it relies on visual assessment rather than more complicated measuring of portion sizes. Karimi’s version features rougher lines to introduce some flexibility, and adds a blue line around the plate to suggest the importance of drinking more water.

4 This research has been generously funded by seed grants from the Institute for Humanities Research at Arizona State University and ASU’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, and by a Research: Art Works grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

5 Examples are the ‘nutritional plays’ put on by health insurance/managed care corporations like Kaiser Permanente or media companies like FoodPlay.

6 See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HFmGTVy3Ic.