Acute Care: Performing Emotional Labors

Acute Care: Performing Emotional Labors

Based on Oral Histories with Nurses
Directed by Beth Cleary 

April 6-9. 2017
Main Stage Theater, Janet Wallace Fine Arts Center

The Macalester College Theatre and Dance Department presents Acute Care: Performing Emotional Labors, directed by Beth Cleary.

Acute Care is an oral history-based performance, using the words and stories of over 20 Twin Cities nurses who gave interviews for this project.  Acute Care explores how nurses became nurses; nursing specialties; the highly technical language and special expertise nurses use in their jobs; the varieties of the nursing experience, including the hectic pace, night shift work, dealing with anxious families, and helping patients both get better and die with dignity. The Macalester students performing Acute Care play nurses in ten specialty areas, from emergency to pediatrics.  They also play patients, and they play themselves.  They have been very involved in the creation of this piece, and are eager to give the nurses who interviewed for this project visibility and voice.

Beth Cleary is the director and conducted the first set of interviews in 2010.  Cleary has taught theatre history and directed at Macalester for 24 years.  Her recent productions include: The Glass Menagerie, the U.S. premiere of Naomi Wallace’s The Inland Sea, and 12 Ophelias by Caridad Svich.  She has directed in the Twin Cities through Naked Stages, the Minnesota Jewish Theatre and the Playwrights’ Center.

Ensemble of Actors

Creative Team