Barton Hosts Medical Readers’ Theater Performance and Discussion

WILSON, N.C. – Barton College is pleased to welcome back the Readers’ Theater from the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University. On Tuesday, Nov. 18, at 7 p.m., medical students from the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University will present a public reading and discussion of Jay Baruch’s short story “Breathing” in the Hamlin Student Center Theater at Barton College. This presentation is open to the public at no charge, and the community is invited to attend.

Jay Baruch is an emergency medicine physician who teaches at Brown University. “Breathing” appears in Baruch’s 2007 book of short stories, “Fourteen Stories: Doctors, Patients, and Other Strangers.” It tells the story of an elderly father who cannot live on his own but resents having to move in with his son’s family. The audience will see the impact of this forced living arrangement on family relations in general and on the individuals involved. It is a timely story that explores a situation more and more common in modern American society.

The 30-minute reading will be followed by a discussion of the story moderated by a member of the medical school’s Department of Medical Humanities.

In Readers’ Theater, the performers, usually medical and nursing students, sit before the audience and read from scripts. Like radio dramas, much is left to the listener’s imagination. The program, part of an on-going Readers’ Theater program sponsored by the Department of Medical Humanities at ECU’s Brody School of Medicine and the ECU College of Nursing, allows students and the general public (future physicians and nurses and their potential future patients) to discuss together social and ethical medical issues of common concern.

The performance is especially relevant to anyone who has or contemplates caring for an older relative. Statistics show family caregiving has become a normative experience in our society, and the typical female in the U.S. will spend more years caring for an older relative than for her own children. Performances have always been well received, and the discussion which follows is typically quite rich, profound, and meaningful.

This program is sponsored by the School of Behavioral Sciences at Barton College and will last about an hour. For additional information, contact Dr. Steven Fulks, dean of the School of Behavioral Sciences at Barton College, at 252-399-6570 or email: sfulks@barton.edu.

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Questions? Please contact Kathy Daughety, director of public relations, at 252-399-6529 or email: kdaughety@barton.edu.