Applied Theatre in Paediatrics: Stories, Children and Synergies of Emotions

141 Pages·2022·1.415 MB·English

by  Persephone Sextou

APPLIED THEATRE
IN PAEDIATRICS
This book explores applied theatre practice for children in environments of illness
and cure and how it can powerfully normalise children’s hospitalisation experience.
It is an essential tool for making meaning of children’s illness, putting it into a
fictional context and developing better control of their clinical experiences. It can
be central to raising the standards of care and quality of life during illness.
Taken from the author’s research and participatory bedside theatre practice in
hospitals before, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, this book demonstrates
new learning about aesthetics, ethics, emotions, stories, puppetry, digital arts
and research methodologies about children’s health and wellbeing. It provides a
selection of ten unique stories told by children inspired by applied theatre practice in
paediatrics, cardiac, oncology, neurosurgery, burns units and complex and intensive
care wards. Stories aid in understanding the language of children’s pain for a better
assessment and management of pain by healthcare professionals through the arts.
It analyses synergistic theatre performance in ‘stitched lands’ between challenging
realities and safe fictionalities. This book enables artists to develop new ways of
thinking and contributes to further improvements in the provision of education
and reflective learning in the field.
It also addresses the emotional labour of the artist in healthcare and makes
recommendations for balanced training to prevent emotional exhaustion.
Designed for artists, healthcare professionals, therapists, play specialists and
teachers who work with children in healthcare, this text aims to help many people
find creative ways of making a positive difference in sick children’s lives. It is a book
for those who love and care for children.
Persephone Sextou is a professor in applied theatre for health and wellbeing and
the director of the Sidney De Haan Research Centre at Canterbury Christ Church
University. She is a leading expert in participatory dramas for sick children in hospitals
with 30 years of experience in academia around the world. She is the proud mother
of two and the author of Theatre for Children in Hospital: The Gift of Compassion.
Learning through Theatre: Dramatic Opportunities,
Engagements and Challenges
Series Editors
John O’Toole and Kelly Freebody
This series commissions in-depth studies of the use of theatre and drama for the
widest range of specific purposes – beyond entertainment itself – that involve learn-
ing. Contexts include formal educational settings such as schools and colleges, as
well as social, communal, health, political, developing world, human services, war
zones and commercial contexts. In the fields of applied theatre and drama educa-
tion, three paradigms often define the purpose and the practice:
• drama as art
• drama as education
• drama as social action and change.
Books in the series tackle both the opportunities and the tensions among these
paradigms: the developments, the challenges and the achievements in this still-
growing field. Critical awareness and appraisal are a key feature, with some titles
primarily grounded in theory and analysis, some more illustrative of good and
bad practice. Authors include pioneers and established leaders as well as emerging
practitioners and scholars.
Teaching and Learning Through Dramaturgy: Education as
an Artful Engagement
Anna-Lena Østern
Applied Theatre in Paediatrics
Stories, Children and Synergies of Emotions
Persephone Sextou
For more information, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/Learning-Through-
Theatre/book-series/LTT
APPLIED THEATRE
IN PAEDIATRICS
Stories, Children and Synergies
of Emotions
Persephone Sextou
Designed cover image: Persephone Sextou
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 Persephone Sextou
The right of Persephone Sextou to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-367-48325-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-48326-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-03934-1 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003039341
Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
To my husband Michalis and my children Eleni and Nektarios,
who make my world worth living.

CONTENTS
Preface ix
Acknowledgements xiv
1 Hospitalised children’s stories in applied theatre 1
A synergistic and eudemonic phenomenon 1
Stories in-betweenness 6
Communicating pain: a process of attunement 9
Applied theatre or play therapy? 11
The ‘fictional bubble’: explosions and interruptions 14
The act of caring 15
The ‘marginal participant’ technique 16
2 Applied theatre and digital assets on the wards 21
The ‘Rocket-Arts’ project in hospitals 21
Pre-pandemic bedside performance 23
Post-pandemic digital solutions 25
Collection of stories 26
The impact of COVID-19 on ‘Rocket-Arts’ 29
3 Sick children’s stories: from patients to story-makers 31
Introduction to stories 31
Jane: ‘The piano is on fire’ 33
Sheila: ‘A moon made of cheese’ 35
Paul: ‘The naughty Wolf’ 37
Alex: ‘My grandfather’s wellies’ 39
viii Contents
Sandy: ‘We need the Pancakes’ 42
Claire: ‘Silence’ 43
Karim: ‘No!’ 45
Lisa: ‘A robot who could not dance’ 46
Melissa: ‘The Planetary’ 47
Margaret: ‘A park for the animals’ 49
Stories of hospitalisation on a stitched land 52
4 Applied performance, puppetry and hospital tuition 60
The ‘Bird Island’ project 60
Lollie the rough collie and the magic kiss 61
Feeling worried in paediatrics 62
The dramatic frame 63
Participatory puppetry in hospital 64
Research 66
Complementing artistic knowing 68
Emma’s story 72
Katarina’s story 73
Azeeb’s story 74
5 Caring enough is never enough: training actors on
emotional skills 78
Reflective poetry in paediatrics 78
Reflections 80
Walking the labyrinth on the ward: a metaphor 84
Caring for the artist: we can’t pour from an empty cup! 85
Emotional awareness: an act of caring 87
Realisations to take forward 90
Who is the excellent actor in healthcare? A portrait 92
6 The future: questions and recommendations 97
A flashback: my practice in a nutshell 97
Post-pandemic learning 101
Time for change 108
Actions by healthcare providers 110
Actions by local authorities and governments 111
Actions by artists 111
Appendix A Rocket-Arts’ or Simba, the therapy dog. The script 115
Appendix B ‘Lollie the rough collie and the magic kiss’. The story 120
Index 123
PREFACE
This book is for those who love and care for children, their emotions and their
stories as powerful experiences of joyful moments in illness. Every child’s story is
entirely individual. Every child sees life through their filters. Every reading has its
powers. Those who care for sick children tend to their imaginative stories. Can
stories offer children control over their emotions and experience of illness? Can
making stories help them play with the images and experiences they have and gain
a clearer understanding of how life is, a better vision of who they are, how they
feel, who they want to become, what path they want to walk and what steps to
change they should take creatively? Children may tell stories to escape from reality,
to attract our attention and ask for help.
Stories make us human. We tell stories to make sense of what we experience in
life and connect with others in good and bad times. We review and revise the past
through our stories, understand and tolerate the present and visualise tomorrow.
We use stories to travel in time. We tell stories to reach out for the imagined and
the possible. Stories are ways of demystifying the mystery of life, revealing hidden
truths and emotions. Stories of birth. Stories of love. Stories of pain. Stories of ill-
ness. Stories of hope. Stories of death. Stories of escape. Stories of regret. Stories of
forgiveness. Stories of growth. We share our emotions with people we know well,
those we trust, people we have just met, and others we hope to meet and unite
through our stories.
I have been working with children in various roles since 1992, and I can con-
firm from my experience that children are masters of imagination. They have a
unique gift, a capacity to pull threads from their worlds and use them in stories
that can create connections between them and their characters, between their own
experiences and the experiences of others. In addition, they do not even care about
how adults will perceive their stories. Most children’s stories are genuine, original
and spontaneous. They come from an authentic place, and thus, they may sound