PHARMAKON: PERFORMANCE SCIENCE
Pharmakon: Performance Science documents a Zoom performance and classroom process investigating intersections between pharmacy and theater with focus on medicine (and toxicity), economies of care, and social healing.
Over spring semester 2021 at the University of Minnesota, 14 students and 3 faculty members (in theater and pharmacy) dug into the roots of pharmakon--a term meaning at once healing and poison. Students responded to prompts imagining new drugs, relating personal medication stories, embodying ancient healers and Greek choral texts. They created healing rituals inspired by the campus’s Native American Medicine Garden. We considered the U.S. opioid crisis and its relation to racial logics and commodity capitalism with members of zAmya Homeless/Housed theater company. We theatricalized new findings in psychedelic therapy documented by Michael Pollan in How to Change Your Mind. Throughout the class, we worked to rethink our relationship to plants, fungus, earth--and to each other--as interdependent. We related these stories to an audience of pharmacy and theater students via an interactive Zoom performance. This short documentary intends to share this experience with a broader audience that includes those with interest in medical humanities, pharmacy, and public health.
DOCUMENTARY
filmed & edited by Kyra Rahn
Press
ZOOM PERFORMANCE
performed on May 7th, 2021
THE TEAM
Luverne Seifert
Professor, Head of BA Performance, University of Minnesota
Sonja Kuftinec
Professor, University of Minnesota Theatre Arts and Dance
Paul Ranelli
Professor, University of Minnesota Duluth, Social Pharmacy PhD
A scholar, a clown, and a pharmacist walk into a library--and that’s no joke. Our convergence as co-instructors over two years of research and planning has, in fact, come to feel more like a road trip--or perhaps a journey of ongoing discovery. Pharmakon represents one moment in that process, joined by a stalwart group of students, including graduate research associate Michael Valdez. Over the spring semester, the students--many confined intermittently by Covid to Zoom, or struggling to make sense of their relationships to interpersonal healing and social toxicity--took on the role of co-explorers. They responded to prompts imagining new drugs, relating personal medication or intoxication stories, embodying ancient healers, and forging through Greek choral texts to examine the roots of the pharmakon--a term meaning at once medicine, poison, and scapegoat.
CAST
Noah Branch
Regan Carter
Mel Fellows
Amber Frederick
Kierney Gray
Grace Hillmeyer
Emiliano Silva Izquierdo
Alexandra Jorndt
Noah Keating
Claire Loveall
Emily Vaillancourt
MC, “Oprah” pusher, Friend
Pythagorus, Maenad
Dionysus, Automaton Influencer, Friend
Maenad, Ensemble
Dr. Kierney Gray, Artemis, Maenad
Minerva, Maenad
Dr. John Wayne, Filmmaker
Hermes, Ensemble
Remembrol, Asclepios, juggler,
Hecate, Brain Fog Diffuser, Maenad,
historical pharmacist
Artistic & Research team
Co-Instructors; Directors
Co-Instructor; Wearer of Many Hats
Research Assistant; Co-director
Film; Editing
Additional films
Research Librarians
Pharmacy Consultants
Luverne Seifert, Sonja Kuftinec
Prof. Paul Ranelli
Michael Valdez
Kyra Rahn
Emiliano Silva Izquierdo
Sarah Jane Brown, Deborah Ultan
Lisa Hillman, Caroline Gaither, and Jon Schommer
Land Acknowledgment
We recognize that the land we are performing and Zooming on in Mni Sota Makoce is the homeland of the Dakota and Ojibwe people. The state of Minnesota encompasses 11 tribes and communities of the Dakota and Ojibwe, who are the original caretakers of the land, and are still here and thriving. Within our development process we have worked to treat the earth as a relative rather than extractive resource.