Title:Caring acts

A Georgetown collaboration highlights the transformative power of caregiving and theater as a healing art. Staged to rave reviews in late 2024, The Art of Care play originally grew out of a 2020 course called “Performance and Pandemic” taught by theater professor Derek Goldman, who holds a joint appointment in the School of Foreign Service and is co-founder of the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics.

Developed in partnership with the Medical Humanities Initiative and the School of Health, the play’s stories about care came from intimate conversations with a range of people using the In Your Shoes method of deep listening pioneered by Goldman. As the script took shape, Goldman connected with former student Reginald Douglas (C’09), artistic director of Mosaic Theater Company in Washington, DC. Douglas recognized the power of the project and signed on to present the play.

“The topic of the play embodies both our missions, as well as our vision about how theater can activate a community,” says Douglas.

In the spring of her junior year, health care major Wonnie Kim (H’25) joined the production, combining her interests in theater and health.

“Everything just clicked,” says Kim, who ultimately became assistant director of the play. In addition to her work during rehearsals, Kim helped translate scientific information into the artful language for the script.

School of Health Dean Christopher King calls Kim’s professional aspiration to combine the arts and health a “perfect example” of reconceptualizing what health care looks like.

“We must go beyond the traditional biomedical approach and normalize a bio/psycho/social approach to how we care for populations,” he says.

Today the theater production has grown into a university initiative exploring the role that narrative storytelling can play around care, says Goldman.

“This project is just a small element of a much broader movement of energy around the connection between art and health and social cohesion and well-being. With Georgetown’s values in this area, I love the idea that we can be one kind of hub to amplify this work.”

Read more about the creation of Art of Care in the Summer 2025 Georgetown Health Magazine >