Sleeping beauties. (360G-Wellcome-079229_Z_06_Z)

Sleeping Beauties Sleeping Beauties (working title) is a development process for a theatre script and workshop programme concerned with: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/ME How doctors and patients communicate with each other (or don't) Coping with the certainty of illness experience in the context of uncertainty about its biomedical basis Understanding the contemporary role of biomedical explanations of disease in a setting notable for their absence The 'art' of medicine, thus needed to complement and support the (emerging) science. An initial and successful exploratory workshop, involving the applicants and two actors, was conducted as part of the Theatre Royal Plymouth's Theatre of Science project. A presentation of two first draft scenes from this workshop was presented at the Association of Medical Humanities Conference in July 2005. This received very positive response: including its ability to convey swiftly some key issues about the illness and its impact on patients, carers and professionals; and the veracity of the portrayals in the script from an experienced clinician and a qualified researcher whose doctorate involved interviews with over 200 such patients. We now intend to: Develop a first-draft script written by Simon Turley, with dramaturgical and workshop input from Jeff Teare and clinical and scientific input from Tony Pinching. Run workshops with medial students (part of a special study unit at the Peninsula Medical School - PMS) CFS sufferers and their carers (through local and national CFS/ME Groups, clinicians and actors. Create a presentation based on this work to be shown as part of the national conference marking the roll-out of the new CFS/ME clinical services in March 2006. The presentation, or its material, will then be offered to other training workshops for health professionals and patients/carers. A public reading of the full script will then be staged in London before an intended professional production in late 2006.