Medicine and magic – two kinds of close-up live performance takes place
Published: 26 November 2020
Open Spaces hosted its launch event for the 2020/21 academic year, ‘Medicine and magic – two kinds of close-up live performance’ on Wednesday 11 November. Attended by St George’s students, staff and alumni, the session was a fascinating discussion between Professor Roger Kneebone and magician Dr Will Houston of Imperial College London on the nature of performance, the importance of resilience in developing expertise, and how the methods used by magicians can translate into the healthcare setting. Future Open Spaces sessions are detailed below.
The evening began with an introduction from Principal, Professor Jenny Higham, before Roger and Will discussed the path to becoming expert with Roger explaining how this has traditionally been framed as going from apprentice to journeyman to master. The importance of resilience and determination on the path to mastery was also discussed, as was the importance of having experts more generally.
The discussion then moved on to the idea of naturalness with Will explaining the importance of making the audience feel as comfortable and normal as possible when performing magic. Roger then explained the parallels he felt existed when working as a GP in trying to discern the ailment of a patient outlining how he adapted his GP surgery to make it feel more homely so to put the patient at ease more readily.
Further parallels between the disciplines of magic and healthcare such as the importance of having a structure in place when trying to improvise and how everything you do as a healthcare worker or magician portrays information to the patient/audience followed. A question and answer session followed in which students, staff and alumni shared their thoughts on what had been said during the session.
In her closing remarks, Vice Principal (Education), Professor Jane Saffell, said, “I’d like to express, on behalf of St George’s, our enormous and warm thanks to Roger and Will for a really illuminating conversation. I know that it’s going to give us food for thought long after this evening. I think that it epitomises what Open Spaces is all about, bringing together diverse perspectives and the new thinking that emerges from it.”
Open Spaces is a new and evolving extra-curricular programme bringing science, medicine, and healthcare into dialogue with the arts, humanities, and enterprise. It aims to provide creative opportunities and stimulate interdisciplinary encounters between staff and students, students on different programmes, and between the University and the local community.
Visit the Open Spaces website to see what else is on offer including creative workshops, informal meetings with leading St George’s Academics, seminars, mastery sessions and extra-curricular modules.