Theater of healing

Arts program enriches lives of patients at Tewksbury Hospital

By NANCYE TUTTLE, Sun Staff

TEWKSBURY -- It's showtime at Tewksbury Hospital. Eager actors, dressed in black and wearing white masks, take their marks, project their lines and share their thoughts about love, trust and acceptance.

Transforming the Myth is a lively multimedia show, an original production based on Mary Zimmerman's play, Metamorphoses. It's the culminating activity in a nine-week artist-in-residency program here.

The program is sponsored by Healing Arts: New Pathways to Health, a partnership of the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Vermont Arts Exchange and a consortium of local arts and health-care providers. The title says it all, according to the actors. And it attests to the transforming power that the arts can make in people's lives.

"This is the first time I've been able to get over the mental health problems I've had since high school," said Jaze McAskill, 28, a hospital resident. "I am the best adult person I have ever been and the theater program has helped."

Desiree Smith, 15, one of several Tewksbury High students who participated in the program, agrees.

"I've made friends with the patients and learned about people with mental illness. They're relaxed, funny and have the same needs we all do. I plan on volunteering here," she said.

Their remarks are what hospital staff, Mass. Cultural Council liaison staff and the artists hope to hear about this program that reaches diverse populations.

"So many people put 110 percent into this piece. And we are so lucky to have wonderfully talented people with such rich lives here at the hospital," said Megan Gleeson, a Boston actress and teacher who directed the program's theatrical segment.

Anne Loyer, a Boston visual artist, supervised mask construction and created multimedia slides projected onto the walls.

Hospital staffers Ellen McManus, an expressive therapist who started a theater program for patients at Tewksbury Hospital, and Victoria Buckley, an occupational therapist, also were involved, interviewing patients and helping at script development and acting workshops. They even donned masks to perform with patients and students.

"The play is a synthesis of all they have done here. Tewksbury has an incredibly strong expressive arts program and this play is very special," said Ilana Hardesty, manager of the Healing Arts Initiative for the Mass. Cultural Council.

The program uses the arts as a treatment method for patients living with chronic disabling diseases, both mental and physical, at participating health-care sites. Other artist residencies at Tewksbury Hospital included a writing workshop in memoirs and poetry with local author Peggy Rambach and Hyperscore, a music project that allowed patients to compose their own scores with software developed by Tod Machover of the MIT Media Lab that were performed by the Lowell Philharmonic Orchestra.

The programs are one of the best things happening here, said Buckley, who works with mental health patients. "Bringing together Department of Public Health (DPH) and Department of Mental Health patients (DMH) is useful and unifying for them," she said.

And for the mental health patients, the program is often a catalyst for recovery. "One patient told me that when the arts speak to her, her well side answers," said Buckley.

Contact Healing Arts partners.