The Australian Actors' Wellbeing Study: A Preliminary Report (original) (raw)
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Objectives: Performing Arts Medicine (PAM) specializes in providing healthcare to performing artists. Participation in the performing arts can cause injury and impair performing artists' art and livelihood. While healthcare is often available for professionals, university-level students remain underserved. Therefore, our objective was to describe the successful development and implementation of the George Mason University university-level PAM program as a possible template for other institutions. Participants: Collaborations among the Athletic Training Education Program, the Department of Dance, and the University Central Administration. Methods: An athletic trainer provided free healthcare services that included preventive care, acute emergency and non-emergency injury care, assessment and referral, and rehabilitation to the students. Results: Nearly 100 different injuries and 300 assessment and treatment healthcare sessions were provided in the first year of the program. Program benefits included improved healthcare for dancers, increased learning opportunities for students, research opportunities, and enhanced university recognition. Conclusions: The PAM program offers primary injury prevention by implementing performing artists specific interventions and secondary prevention to improve their health outcomes. Overall, we hope the program's success encourages other institutions to provide in-house healthcare to their students, eventually helping improve healthcare status of all university-level performing artists.
Performing Arts and the Promotion of Health
PER-FORMING THE SOCIAL. EDUCATION, CARE AND SOCIAL INCLUSION THROUGH THEATRE
The concept of health, like every other concept, has a cultural origin and undergoes epistemic changes with time. Together with the discourses it produces, it is strongly influenced by the zeitgeist. Today more than ever before: the preoccupation with what, for lack of a better word, we call "health", has invaded our everyday life. One could almost consider it an activity in itself and for itself, separate from other preoccupations (Benasayag, 2008, p. 9).
Article 4 Theatrical Reflections of Health: Physically Impacting Health-Based Research
griffith.edu.au
This article explores the intersection of theatre performance and the dissemination of health research. A collaboration between health scientists and theatre artists to develop After the Crash, a play about brain injury based on health research knowledge, highlights differing methodological approaches and expectations of the ultimate theatrical outcome. Specifically, this article discusses how performed representation of the body contributes to the dissemination of health research through the lens of After the Crash. This relationship is explored in two ways: first, how embodied performance strays from traditional science-based dissemination methods; and second, the use of abstract movement in the context of a theatrical performance to reflect scientific health-based research. Future directions are also discussed to continue to draw parameters around the formal connection between theatre performance and health research.
HOW DO PERFORMERS INCREASE THEIR WELLBEING? AN INVESTIGATION AMONG MUSIC AND THEATER PROFESSIONALS
Proceedings of ICERI 2018, 2018
How to regulate emotions in stressful situations has become an important skill that professionals routinely need to deal with, especially for classical musicians, theatre actors and performers when moving from backstage to the stage and from the learning environment to the professional one. Conservatories and art schools have recently begun to introduce student services for health purposes, courses where students learn how to cope with performance stress and a concert hall simulator helps musicians prepare to perform. However, despite evidence suggesting that self-confidence is strongly influenced by preparation, researchers have theorized that much of performers' wellbeing is influenced by emotions, attitude perceptions and behaviours. Indeed, practices such as meditation, self-listening, physical activity and relationships are known to have a positive effect on wellbeing and stress regulation but in today's word, these practices are often hard to ground in daily preparation routine. The question remains: How can we most effectively integrate them to lifestyle coping strategies to support wellbeing? Under what conditions do wellbeing-increasing activities work best? To address these questions, we present here UpStage, an interactive toolkit of working strategies for emotional regulation and performance training that serves in the role of mediator to enable positive change in performers. The tool is designed on the results of a qualitative study conducted with 18 experienced and anxiety-free professionals. By investigating stress management as a human intrinsic skill, we present a design tool and discuss wellbeing strategies for an effective informal learning practice.
Applied theatre: performing health and wellbeing
Studies in Theatre and Performance, 2017
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"This article reports on practice-based pilot research being undertaken at Birmingham Children’s Hospital in England on the impact of bedside theatre performance on hospitalized children’s wellbeing. It discusses the process of creating theatre for sick children, connecting with the hospital and working within tight hospital routines, dealing with ethics, working with theatre artists, and performing to children. It also reports on evidence collected by questionnaire and interviews about the perceived benefits of bedside theatre by children and their parent/carers. This emphasis on the process is appropriate for theatre practitioners, arts therapists and clinical staff who work with hospitalised children. Key words: Theatre, Applied Drama, Public Health, Children, Well-being."