‘Bulgakov Moments’

January 16, 2013

A New Project for 2013 in Association with the Royal College of Surgeons.

In this new project we will be exploring those formative moments in which doctors feel the full impact of having to think and act decisively in a clinical crisis. We’re using Mikhail Bulgakov’s ‘A Country Doctor’s Notebook’ as a starting point to examine how it feels to be confronted with the raw, urgent reality of clinical practice after the safe and clean world of formal training and education.
The project offers opportunities for physicians to share these moments and to explore and appreciate their significance. The stories gathered will be used to create an exciting new performance piece for medical practitioners, students and the public. They will also be archived for future reference and training.
Performance development is still at an early stage and its precise form will be shaped by the stories we hear. However, it may take place at the Royal College of Physicians itself and could be based on an Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE), an event structure well known to doctors and medical students.
We will be developing the performance piece through workshops and readings in late spring/summer 2013 with a view to a production in late 2013/early 2014.

Picture - A ‘Bulgakov Moment’ from Theatrescience’s ‘The Invisible River’ by Gautam Raja, recently revived in Bangalore.

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