Patient Safety Theatre™
make 'em laugh
make 'em cry
make 'em think . . .
These short plays are based upon a case specific to the interests of the audience and combine structured improvisation, audience interaction and targeted debriefing to deliver your message. We’ve presented Case-Based Improvs on the following topics:
Case-Based Improvs can be used to focus an audience on any aspect of healthcare in which human interaction affects final outcome.
These plays, commissioned by healthcare educators from across the country, are performed by the Patient Safety Players™, a company of professional actors and directors.
Case Closed
(also available on video)
Comic Drama
TRT: 12 minutes
Commissioned: Roxanne Goeltz, President and Co-Founder of Consumers Advancing Patient Safety
A tenacious personal injury lawyer trolls the hospital cafeteria, hoping to find her next client. What kind of stories catch her attention? What errors and subsequent responses convince her she's got a hot prospect? And when does she realize that a particular case is going nowhere? Case Closed is designed to provoke discussion about how to “do the right thing” for patients and family members and thereby short circuit the connection between medical errors and litigation.
The Barber and The Beast
Comic Fable, with music
TRT: 45 minutes
Commissioned: MHA Insurance Company
Drawing from historic legal texts, Patient Safety Theatre™ has created a medieval malpractice fable that pits Figarello, a young barber-surgeon, against the Beast -- a vicious and highly effective plaintiff's attorney. Fortunately, Figarello gets the occasional aid of Amorini, his Fairy God Risk Manager. This three act comedy has a serious side with direct corollaries to contemporary issues like informed consent, disclosure, and conflict resolution. Using music and magic to cast a spell, the play moves audiences to revisit both the difficulty and the importance of truth-telling in patient relations. In its premiere, The Barber and The Beast featured staff members from MHA Insurance Company, the commissioning organization.
The Briggs Case
Drama
TRT: 60 minutes
Commissioned: p4ps, VHA, Inc., and Premier, Inc.
The Briggs Case originally unfolded over the course of three days at the 2001 Patient Safety Symposium in Dallas. Using a combination of video, guerilla theatre, structured improvisation, mock newspaper articles and a mock press conference, this drama demonstrates the rapidity with which an adverse patient event, poorly handled, can spin out of control into a media frenzy. Along the way, the show helps audience members empathize with the many players in the event, and works to identify critical moments at which another choice might well have avoided devastating consequences.
For reading or full performance
Each of the following full-length plays, written by Patient Safety Theatre™ playwright Dana Yeaton, has had multiple professional production in theatres around the country. These scripts address healthcare issues in from a broader, more sociological context than the Commissioned Plays. For clinicians, risk managers and other health care providers, these plays offer highly topical entertainment with a provocative twist.
Patient Safety Theatre™ can present any of these plays either as a sit-down chamber reading, a script-in-hand staged reading (minimal tech), or as a full production (full tech: props, costumes, lights, sound, etc.). These productions are best used as a full evening’s entertainment in the context of a conference.
Midwives
Drama
TRT: 120 minutes
When trapped in a complicated birthing, lay-midwife Sibyl Danforth makes a decision that ultimately brings her into conflict with the allopathic medical community. Is childbirth a medical condition or a natural function of life? Where does action taken in an emergency become negligence and malpractice? Based upon the New York Times best-selling novel by Chris Bohjalian, Dana Yeaton's stage play Midwives is a taut medical and legal thriller.
The Big Random
Comic Drama
TRT: 120 minutes
Claire is about to turn sixteen in the psych ward of Boston hospital when she is smuggled out by a stranger who claims to be her godfather. Without her medication, they head north into Quebec on a journey that will take them both deep into their own pathologies -- and perhaps to the psychological turning point in their lives. How do we interact with those who resist our help? Where does the line between personality, circumstance and history get drawn? What are the limits to medicine?
JUMP CUT
Comic Drama
TRT: 65 minutes
Alan, a self-employed architect, is about to undergo surgery aimed at correcting his epilepsy. In preparation, he tries to get the most crucial parts of his business life on videotape but as the operation approaches, he starts to worry more about the other parts of his memory that may not be lost. And who would he be then? This one-man show combines video and live performance to portray a man for whom elective surgery may be his final choice.
