Note: In the workshop of The Real Health Center, this score was used only until and including phase 4.
0 Reception
Task for the performer: to swim into the perception of the participant
Approaches (‘tools’) for the performer:
What is the distance from the articipant?
What is their quality of movement?
What is their rhythm?
Take an eye contact, but see if it’s too much. Then decide on how to use that from that point onwards.
If the articipant talks, answer, but in the beginning don’t encourage talk if it seems to take the scene into an ‘ordinary’ level of talking.
As a general rule, keep silence before the first question. However, as mentioned, if the person talks – or you sense that the articipant is uncomfortable because of the silence – let it go into talk.
Establish physical contact if that doesn’t seem wrong for some reason. Shaking the hand of the patient when meeting a doctor is a ‘normal’ thing to do and creates a sense of security and connection.
1 Examining
Task for the performer: find a physical starting point for the meaning
Approaches (‘tools’) for the performer: The main thing: where is the focus of the articipant; which of those foci is the most meaningful one.
The ideal would be that the you wouldn’t define the starting point for the meaning, but that it would arise from the articipant.
2 Finding meaning
One thing is picked as the thing to be examined more closed, ‘treated’. This can be opened up also verbally so that it’s recognized, understood consciously.
Task for the performer: find meaning; link physical starting point with meaning
When the meaning is found, go on to the next level: new task.
In addition to these internal dramaturgies or dramaturgies that happen on a level of principles, there is also one question that you can use as a tool. This tool can be used to f.e. take the discussion into a more relevant direction, to create a change in the way the scene is progressing or if you are completely lost and can’t sense what the articipant needs.
The question doesn’t necessarily have to happen at this point in the dramaturgy, it can happen anywhere during the beginning of the scene. It often works as a jolt: The scene had been moving along for some time, may be without words, then the meaning have been found and both have a sense that we are now holding something and then comes the first question:
Why did you come to see the doctor today?
3 Action
Task for the performer: turn the found meaning into shared action
Take into consideration the previous mentions about the relevance of action. It doesn’t mean the action has to be big, but more often than not to get to a greater sense of meaning the articipant needs to activate themselves in some ways. If the activation stays on just one level (f.e. looking) it’s doubtful it will find its way into a strong shared meaning.
If you can’t find any other way, you can say f.e. ‘I’d now like to perform one test to confirm that this is really the thing we need to examine’.
4 Deepening the meaning
Task for the performer: deepen the meaning
This is where the rehearsal period (of the performance of The Real Health Center) ended. Approaches for this phase in the score were especially touch and affect. On some occasions the deepening of the meaning also came about through discussion and a more intellectual process, but as a whole it seems the feeling or a sense of deeper meaning needed a physical component.
5 Prescription
Task for the performer: create a whole of the whole experience;
continue and take to another level the experience into an experience that the articipant can then do by themselves.
The prescription was formalized through the process and created a form for it that was at this point in the structure given to the articipant along with a map to help them find their way later in the woods.
Prescription followed the logic of a real prescription that we discussed with the performer Olli who is also a general physician by other profession.
Main sections of it were: treatment / referral / dosage / diagnosis which correlated with our internal structure of what we have found out as meaning / whether they are going to the clinic (another location and scene in the performance) / how many times to do the prescription / what is the actual prescription.
6 Time for articipant’s own reflection
When the physical action was done, the performer let the articipant usually in some kind of resting position (this was possible to change if the scene went in some other direction). When the articipant was resting, the performer wrote a prescription. The performer then gave the articipant some final instructions and then left the articipant to be by themselves for a few minutes. Then the performer left so that the articipant would wake up, find the prescription by their side and leave before performer receives the next patient.