With a nod from the professor, the cluster of Chattanooga State students bolts into action.
A table flips into a makeshift hospital bed. The room echoes with the jangle of chair legs as each person finds their place in the scene.
“Oh my son, my poor son!” one student cries out, clutching tightly the arm of another student lying rigidly across the table — her dead child.
Another student — starring as the friendly nurse — leans in close and puts a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “I know this is hard,” she says in a soft tone. “You lost your son.”
Then the atmosphere gets tense as another student — a pushy, terse nurse — rushes in, needing the hospital room for an injured patient.
“Excuse me,” she says. “We have to get them out of this room.He’s already dead!”
This may sound a tinge melodramatic but the situation is plucked right out of daily life in hospitals and clinics.
Every week, students in Dr. Susan Stoker’s medical ethics class find themselves in character, acting out the morally dubious situations lived out by doctors and nurses. The philosophy class has become an important training ground for nursing students, but it attracts enrollment from all corners of Chattanooga State Community College.
Dr. Stoker hopes by training the class to act ethically on their toes they can avoid making the kind of mistakes they regret.
Sometimes the scenes are scary. A few weeks ago, the group dealt with a situation in which a man was so upset about a family member dying in hospice care, he returned to the hospice with a gun and started shooting.
Sometimes the scenes are more comical. What are the best ways to give a sponge bath or carry a person from the hospital bed to a toilet?
“It is definitely a different class,” said Cindy Moore, a social work major at Chattanooga State who’s taking the class. “To be able to act different things out helps you to see different solutions.”
Dr. Stoker, a philosophy professor with a doctoral degree from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., brought forum theater to Chattanooga State this year after moving from the Netherlands, where she taught at the University of Amsterdam.
“What strikes me about ethics is that students can know the theory but not know how to apply it,” said Dr. Stoker. “Competence in theory doesn’t translate to effective moral agency.”
While students flesh out the unexpected moments of medical professionals, Dr. Stoker never hints at there being a right or wrong answer to the problems posed. She doesn’t have to.
“I am not trying to colonize people or to force a specific solution,” she said.
During performances, students can yell ‘stop’ and step into the scene if they feel like the good guy isn’t acting good enough or if the bad guy isn’t acting bad enough.
The scene with the mother and her dead son being pushed out of the hospital room is a good example. Four students stopped the production to step in as the lead nurse. One student got on his knees and pleaded with the mother to think about how she was standing in the way of others being cared for. Students watching gasped. Eyebrows raised. ‘Stop’ someone yelled.
How the idea startedThe style of interactive theater being using in academia was introduced to actors by Augusto Boal, a Brazilian director and writer, who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008. Mr. Boal used forum theater to help educate about politics.Source: Chattanooga State
“It’s been interesting to see how people’s values come out, whether they mean for it to or not,” said Amber Sane, a pre-dentistry student in the class.
And acting out ethically dubious situations takes a lot of “loosening up,” as Dr. Stoker calls it. Often, her class begins with the group joining in a close circle and making animal noises that correspond with their name.
“Susan… S… Snake…Shhhhhh,” said Dr. Stoker, slithering her body.
They play dozens of other games that are meant to make speaking and acting in class a million times less embarrassing.
Students say it was a lot to get used to. It’s not normal to attend a class that requires you to be so engaged.
“It’s out of my comfort zone, being out front making noises and animal sounds,” said Ms. Moore, 43. “But it makes me feel close to the people in the class.”