Actor Is UT-Houston Visiting Professor

Megan Cole, lead actor in the Alley Theatre's presentation of Wit last season, will be a visiting professor in The University of Texas-Houston Health Science Center's Health and Human Spirit program this fall.

In Wit, she portrayed the terminally ill English professor and her interactions with health care professionals in Seattle, Houston and Costa Mesa, Calif. Productions.

Communicating with Patients, a nine-workshop course taught by Cole, begins Oct. 30. Students in all UT-Houston schools can take the course for credit. Faculty and staff can also attend, but seating may be limited.

"Cole brings to us a unique perspective, rarely, if ever, heard at an academic health center. She demonstrates how actors get inside the characters they play," says Dr. Stanley Reiser, UT-Houston professor.

Dr. Reiser, holder of the Ross Professorship in Humanities and Technology, is coordinating Cole's activities at the Health Science Center.

"The perspective gained from a sympathetic understanding of the patient's world permits practitioners to make the most effective therapeutic interventions," says Dr. Reiser.

Cole has acted in everything from Shakespeare to Seinfeld. She has also made guest appearances on ER, The Practice and Star Trek. She has received two L.A. Drama Critics' Circle Awards and three L.A. Drama-Logue Awards for her stage work.

Cole says the workshops grew out of performing Wit, and will build on many discussions she had with students and faculty at UT-Houston and M. D. Anderson, about the issues the play raises, and will be both philosophical and practical

"We will work with actors' training methods to provide tools for empathic communication, but we're not trying to make the students into actors," says Cole.

Acting techniques will be used to help students put themselves in the patient's place, to deepen their awareness of the patient's inner world and provide an arena for lively debate. The focus will be active, experiential and free flowing.

Experiencing the Other, workshops 1 and 2, will focus on writings of patients, their loved-ones and professional caregivers, through performance, readings and discussion.

Experiencing the Self, workshop three, provides exercises in relaxation and stress reduction. Cole considers these actions important for anybody who wants to stay healthy and sane.

Workshop four looks at and works on body language and status, and workshop five looks at hearing, seeing and touching.

Putting Communication into Action, workshops six and seven, look at the medical encounter through drama, and workshop eight continues that through short stories and poems.

The final workshop, What We Have Discovered, provides a wrap-up using performance, relaxation, improvisation and a summary experience.

Rabbi Samuel Karff, of the Health and Human Spirit Initiative, says, "I am excited and delighted that Megan will partner with us. She not only brings a deep commitment to the goals of the program, but also brings the actor's ability to actually embody the experience of the patient. What a wonderful coup for the Health Science Center."

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©2006 Texas Medical Center

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