Title:Caring acts

A recent Georgetown collaboration highlights theater as a healing art

As the play The Art of Care opens, ensemble member Susan Rome holds up a deep blue Kintsugi bowl, its mended cracks traced with gold.

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery to create a beautiful whole out of imperfect fragments. “It doesn’t hide the scars,” Rome tells the audience.

The bowl provides a visual symbol for the play’s overarching message: that by coming together to care for one another, we can heal in the broken places.

Throughout the play, which is staged on a set resembling a comfortable living room, seven actors share stories—both their own and those of physicians, nurses, and other care providers—in an intimate, theater-in-the-round setting.

These stories are artfully threaded into a tapestry illustrating the myriad ways that care manifests in the world, through relationships between teacher and student, doctor and patient, parent and child, husband and wife, and even two strangers meeting on a dark street at night.

Giving care can mean overcoming fear, as the ensemble demonstrates in stories from the COVID-19 pandemic, including a doctor who protected members of his team who were afraid of bringing the illness home to their families.

Ensemble member Tuyết Thị Phạm tells of her family’s escape by boat from Vietnam and her mother’s courage as she climbs aboard a U.S. Navy ship while clinging to Tuyết, then just 6 months old.

There is also heroism in small acts of care—the woman who drives 80 miles round trip to paint the nails of her friend with cancer, the man who accepts a bandage for a bleeding knee from a physically imposing stranger.

The play is woven through with humor as well as tears. It’s punctuated by music, most notably in the djembe drumming of ensemble member Jabari Exum, a professional percussionist.

Exum’s own story exemplifies the healing power of art. When he was mastering the djembe, he spent hours practicing each day. “I had these little sacred spaces all through Rock Creek Park,” he says. When his godsister began struggling with depression, he would take her with him and she’d sit for hours listening to the drumming and the sound of the water, the trees, the insects. She always came away with a lightened mood.

“What became clear in that process,” Exum says to the audience, “is that the human being is actually electricity, and with art and care, we can plug a person back in.”

Starting by listening

The genesis of The Art of Care is itself a story of community and collaboration. In 2020, Georgetown theater professor Derek Goldman began teaching the class Performance and Pandemic. Working with colleagues involved with the Medical Humanities Initiative, he designed the course to help students process their wide-ranging emotions as they coped with COVID-19’s shutdown of campus.

“That kind of manifestation of personal narratives around health laid a foundation for what would become the Art of Care project,” says Goldman, who holds a joint appointment in the School of Foreign Service.

Using the innovative In Your Shoes method, Goldman initiated a series of intimate conversations about care with a wide range of partners. In Your Shoes, a signature program created by Goldman and other members of Georgetown’s Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics, promotes empathetic listening to build trust. Goldman, The Lab’s co-founder, currently serves as its executive and artistic director.

Christopher King, dean of the School of the Health, became an early supporter of the project. “When I learned about what Derek was doing, I said, ‘This is exactly what our mission aspires to,’” King says.

“Our graduates must be empowered with skill sets that enable them to communicate health information in various ways,” he continues.

“We teach them highly sophisticated research methods, and they get an output. But how do they share the findings? You can’t just say, ‘Read my report.’ That’s not likely to be the most effective way to enlighten minds and influence policy. We must meet people where they are. Storytelling helps humanize the data.”

King began collaborating with Goldman at a time when King was caring for his elderly mother, who passed away in January 2025. “I was grappling with my mom’s condition, and so it was a very emotional time in my life. I shared that with Derek and the team. Through sharing my story, I think it helped them imagine what this might look like in performance.”

Seeking attunement

As the script for The Art of Care began to take shape, Goldman connected with a former student, Reginald Douglas (C’09), the artistic director of Mosaic Theater Company in Washington, DC. Douglas recognized the special nature of the project and signed on to present the play.

“Derek directed Mosaic’s first production 10 years ago, so it’s very full circle to have his relationship with the company grow in this way,” Douglas says. “The topic of the play embodies both our missions, as well as our vision about how theater can activate a community.”

The company’s performers committed themselves to a long process of development through workshops and conversations with health care providers, whose stories were incorporated into the script. For example, the actors visited Georgetown University’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center and spoke with Julia Langley, director of Lombardi’s Arts and Humanities program. Her story of caregivers performing unique songs by each patient’s bedside is featured in The Art of Care.

Another health care narrative came from an oncology nurse, a sister of one of the actors. “She talked a lot about how she thinks of her role as a kind of artist,” Goldman says. “Although on the surface she and her sister’s roles are different, both have this deep attentiveness at the core.

“‘Attunement’ is the word that she used, which is a beautiful word, and the core animating presence of the piece.”

As time went on, the ensemble members themselves began to shape the nature of the play. “The actors were originally hired to take on other people’s stories,” Douglas notes. “But as they were doing their interviews through the In Your Shoes method, they started to become more vulnerable and courageous in talking about their own moments of care. And those stories very naturally came to top.

“They really had to push their craft, because you have to find a way to tell your personal story—some of which has great trauma—multiple times a week to a group of strangers,” he continues.

“For them, it was terrifying at times, it was joyful at times. And it was a moment of great confidence and pride for them to stand firm and tell their story to strangers.”

A ‘theater kid’ finds her place

In the spring of her junior year, Wonnie Kim (H’25) learned about Goldman’s work with The Art of Care from one of her professors, John Kraemer, associate professor and chair of the Department of Health Management and Policy in the School of Health.

“The project seemed like the answer to the internal turmoil in my mind. I’m a health care major and I’m also very passionate about theater, and the two don’t seem to mesh,” Kim says. But she was still hesitant to reach out.

During the summer, Kim finally took the plunge and sent an email to Goldman, offering her help as a student volunteer. To her great surprise, Goldman responded within several hours. The two struck up a dialogue over email and phone. “We realized how my interests academically and professionally were very aligned with what he was doing with this project. Everything just clicked.”

Goldman ultimately invited Kim to become assistant director of The Art of Care, a high honor for her. In addition to her work during rehearsals performing a variety of tasks, from stage blocking to impromptu guitar lessons, Kim helped translate scientific information into the artful language for the script. She attended 25 to 30 hours of rehearsals each week while maintaining a full-time academic schedule.

“During tech week, I was watching the run of the show and making notes of my own, like, ‘I think Raghad should pause a little before saying this line,’ Kim says. “I had felt insecure at first, being a young member of the team, but I could see my changes being implemented day after day,” Kim says. “Derek took my opinions seriously.”

At the same time Kim was involved with The Art of Care production, she was conducting research for her senior thesis, which also deals with the intersection of art and health. “It felt very meta,” she says with a laugh.

Working with advisor Jennifer Natalya Fink, a professor of English and disability studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, Kim is drawing parallels between theatrical and public health responses to the U.S. AIDS epidemic and, more recently, COVID.

Christopher King calls Kim’s career aspiration a “perfect example” of what he means by 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.

“Wonnie wanted that health care degree, but she also realized the power of art,” he continues. “The fact that she has been able to carve out her own pathway—I’m so excited about her future.”

Breathing with the ensemble

When The Art of Care had its world premiere in November 2024, the response from theater critics—a notoriously tough crowd—was overwhelming with praise.

Calling the play “a tremendously heartfelt treatise on the power of human connection,” Washington Post theater critic Naveen Kumar wrote: “The show is almost entirely crafted from the perspectives of its seven-member ensemble, whose radical vulnerability is its marvelous lifeblood. There’s a lot of pain dug up here, but just as much transformative generosity and healing.” The Washington Post named it one of the top productions of the year.

Most gratifying for Goldman and the ensemble, however, was the audience response. “The intensity of the emotional connection for the audience was beyond our wildest imaginings,” he said. “It was a piece where people ended up feeling they were really in community and breathing as one with the ensemble.

“Some people tended to stay in the lobby for long periods afterwards waiting for the cast, wanting to continue the dialogue.”

Working with Georgetown, Mosaic Theater scheduled a series of special events during the play’s run. These included a conversation for caregivers featuring physicians Lakshmi Krishnan, founding director of the Georgetown Medical Humanities program, and Katie Ryder of Kaiser Permanente, a family medicine doctor whose insights were featured in the production, as well as “Arts and Health,” a program focusing on nationwide initiatives at the intersection of art and care.

One of Mosaic’s innovations is an intergenerational matinee program, and The Art of Care proved to be a perfect vehicle for bringing those age groups together.

“Teenagers and seniors enjoying the same experience, talking to one another and learning from each other, beautifully connected to the themes of community and care,” says Douglas.

Goldman found the embrace of the play by the Georgetown community especially moving. “They literally came by the busloads. Some saw it four or five times,” he says. “I underestimated the degree to which a process that foregrounded care—not just as a topic, but manifested in a very specific way—would reach students and young people, that they would feel seen by that.

“There were nights when we had a big multigenerational reunion of an African American family from DC who were viewing it from a different lens than, say, the Global Health Institute team, but they were moved by the same experience,” he continues.

“In some way that for me is the legacy of this project, how this topic of care and this way of approaching is a connecting force. This is one of the rare projects where I felt that power of connection across culture, generations, and educational backgrounds.”

A movement of energy

From the start of developing The Art of Care, as Goldman explains, he and his colleagues envisioned the stage play as part of a larger whole. “The work we were experiencing in so many spaces with community members allowed us to imagine a larger initiative about the role that narrative storytelling could play around care. We saw the theater production as a first catalytic phase.”

As an initial step, The Art of Care ensemble devised a novel method of engaging audience members beyond the life of the play. “At the end of each show, we distributed these little prescription bottles with fun things like the recipe for peach cobbler mentioned during the show,” Kim says. The bottles also had a QR code inviting interested people to sign up for an Art of Care workshop.

“We thought we’d get a few stray people, but in fact the demand was beyond our capacity,” Goldman says.

Over the course of the following months, Goldman partnered with King and other colleagues across the university to further develop the Art of Care Initiative, officially launched in May. The initiative’s interrelated activities include expansion of In Your Shoes collaborations and theatrical performances on and beyond campus. In addition, a new interdisciplinary Art of Care course will be offered beginning in spring 2026 for undergraduate students pursuing both liberal arts and health studies.

Kim, who is continuing her involvement as associate director of the Art of Care Initiative at The Lab, will be focusing on another key element—convenings at the intersection of art and health with partners from across the country as well as internationally to share best practices. “One of our goals is to make this initiative tangible and practical, so people really understand it.”

King is also working on plans for outreach programs to take advantage of the School of Health’s presence at the new Georgetown Capitol Campus.

“We’re going to be downtown, so we’re exploring ways to deepen our impact into the community,” King says. “For example, how can we use the performing arts to amplify our research—much of it focused on health care disparities, especially in lower income populations in DC? We’ll be partnering with schools and units across Georgetown to heighten awareness and inspire change in policy and practice—all for the sake of advancing health and well-being.”

Both King and Douglas are now serving on the advisory board for the Georgetown–Howard Center for Medical Humanities and Health Justice, further aligning the Art of Care initiative with efforts to improve health care delivery and outcomes in the DC community.

“This partnership is changing the way that we as theater artists think about the role of health care, and vice versa—the health care community celebrating live storytelling performance can be a really impactful way to make a difference,” Douglas says.

For Goldman, the Art of Care initiative gives voice to the Georgetown mission of cura personalis. “I feel like 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,” he says. “Part of the hope is to become a meaningful cohering factor for networks of people who are often working in relative isolation to gather strength from each other.

“With Georgetown’s values in this area, I love the idea that we can be one kind of hub to amplify this work.”