- Email: [email protected]
Heartfelt drama
Perspectives
Halley’s research that kick-started our understanding of the secular acceleration of the moon began with Al-Battani’s observations of lunar eclipses in modern Syria. Flourishing trade links between England and the Ottoman Empire further facilitated this flow of knowledge. Merchants, diplomats, and clergy travelling to countries like Syria and Morocco became fascinated by local traditions of using herbs to treat illness, and along with shipments of luscious silk fabrics, they would send back medicinal plants and thousands of manuscripts. Evocative examples of these are on display in Arabick Roots, in which decorative earthenware and jars used in ancient apothecaries are shown alongside rare manuscripts and scientific instruments. The
exhibition sits comfortably within the Royal Society’s own ancientmeets-modern atmosphere. Next week the Royal Society’s broad vision will come into its own at the society’s annual Summer Science Exhibition that cherry-picks recent scientific advances—among this year’s exhibits are new techniques in trauma surgery, a three-dimensional map to guide surgeons through an arterial map (“satnav for surgeons”), and interactive bionic vision for visual impairment. Even while looking to the future, however, the Royal Society is keeping one eye on the past, and entrance to Arabick Roots is part of the Summer Science events. The Royal Society’s involvement in efforts to revive the Arabic world’s glory days of science go beyond this
exhibition. In the past decade, Middle Eastern countries like Egypt, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia have been pumping billions of dollars into revamping their science and technology capacity. The Royal Society’s Atlas of Islamic-World Science and Innovation is currently mapping these countries’ scientific capacity to identify how to reverse the centuries-long decline of science in the region. The reports will seek to offer ideas and solutions for improving infrastructure, encouraging an enthusiasm in science, and stimulating innovative scientific thinking. These roadmaps should offer some clues to how the Islamic world’s glorious scientific history can repeat itself.
Priya Shetty [email protected]
In brief
Alex Brenner
Theatre Heartfelt drama
Heartbreak Soup Written and directed by Laura Lindow, supported by the Wellcome Foundation and Arts Council England http://www.theemptyspace.org. uk/about/our-projects/ heartbreak-soup
20
“How do young people rationalise the irrational? What anxieties and understandings hide under the bed of a child pre transplant?” was one of the questions that led Laura Lindow to write Heartbreak Soup. This is a tender-hearted play about an 11-year-old, born a “blue baby” with a damaged heart, who has been waiting in hospital for a heart transplant for 7 months. It was written and directed by Lindow after she had worked as a “clown doctor” in the heart and lung unit of a hospital in Newcastle upon Tyne, in the UK; she also consulted widely with hospital professionals in paediatric cardiology and psychology and the Children’s Heart Foundation. “The idea was conceived in response to the overwhelming sense of a world untold, that halfway house of the transplant in which so many children and their families reside”, writes Lindow. So this is not a drama about doctors. Indeed, it is aimed partly at young
heart patients and their classmates, and contains almost no medical language. Although the surgeons are overheard off-stage in the operating theatre, only two characters appear on the stage: Cuddy and his mysterious 12-year-old friend Dan, both dressed in blue-coloured pyjamas. The set is simple, though effective: a National Health Service hospital bed. But when the coverlet is raised, various gaily coloured drawers are revealed. Gradually opened by Cuddy, they contain a storehouse of childish items. The entire bed can be transformed, too. With a stretched sheet, it becomes a base camp for adventures on a magical island, until Cuddy over-exerts himself and nearly dies of a heart attack; rotated faster and faster, it becomes a playground roundabout, from which, in reality, Cuddy once disastrously fell. As the audience enters, Cuddy lies alone clutching a puppet, motionless. He sits up and opens the play with unsentimental Northern directness:
“I could be dead.” Then Dan appears— as a disembodied hand from behind the bed, then as a sort of sprightly sprite, weaving and dipping around the bed: now Cuddy sees him, now he does not. But Dan soon becomes substantial and helps Cuddy tell his story. Yet their relationship is not clarified. Is Dan a real friend, or an imaginary one? The answer is left hanging until the very end—when Dan disappears again, and we discover that without his generosity, Cuddy would not exist. It is Dan who introduces the grim subject of surgery, forcing Cuddy to confront his anxieties, rather than dwelling in his fantasy world. Heartbreak Soup is a vigorous, imaginative, at times poetic, exploration of what is for most parents and children, thankfully, an unknown, alien world. The script is far from flawless, but the play deserves to be widely discussed.
Andrew Robinson [email protected]
www.thelancet.com Vol 378 July 2, 2011
Halley’s research that kick-started our understanding of the secular acceleration of the moon began with Al-Battani’s observations of lunar eclipses in modern Syria. Flourishing trade links between England and the Ottoman Empire further facilitated this flow of knowledge. Merchants, diplomats, and clergy travelling to countries like Syria and Morocco became fascinated by local traditions of using herbs to treat illness, and along with shipments of luscious silk fabrics, they would send back medicinal plants and thousands of manuscripts. Evocative examples of these are on display in Arabick Roots, in which decorative earthenware and jars used in ancient apothecaries are shown alongside rare manuscripts and scientific instruments. The
exhibition sits comfortably within the Royal Society’s own ancientmeets-modern atmosphere. Next week the Royal Society’s broad vision will come into its own at the society’s annual Summer Science Exhibition that cherry-picks recent scientific advances—among this year’s exhibits are new techniques in trauma surgery, a three-dimensional map to guide surgeons through an arterial map (“satnav for surgeons”), and interactive bionic vision for visual impairment. Even while looking to the future, however, the Royal Society is keeping one eye on the past, and entrance to Arabick Roots is part of the Summer Science events. The Royal Society’s involvement in efforts to revive the Arabic world’s glory days of science go beyond this
exhibition. In the past decade, Middle Eastern countries like Egypt, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia have been pumping billions of dollars into revamping their science and technology capacity. The Royal Society’s Atlas of Islamic-World Science and Innovation is currently mapping these countries’ scientific capacity to identify how to reverse the centuries-long decline of science in the region. The reports will seek to offer ideas and solutions for improving infrastructure, encouraging an enthusiasm in science, and stimulating innovative scientific thinking. These roadmaps should offer some clues to how the Islamic world’s glorious scientific history can repeat itself.
Priya Shetty [email protected]
In brief
Alex Brenner
Theatre Heartfelt drama
Heartbreak Soup Written and directed by Laura Lindow, supported by the Wellcome Foundation and Arts Council England http://www.theemptyspace.org. uk/about/our-projects/ heartbreak-soup
20
“How do young people rationalise the irrational? What anxieties and understandings hide under the bed of a child pre transplant?” was one of the questions that led Laura Lindow to write Heartbreak Soup. This is a tender-hearted play about an 11-year-old, born a “blue baby” with a damaged heart, who has been waiting in hospital for a heart transplant for 7 months. It was written and directed by Lindow after she had worked as a “clown doctor” in the heart and lung unit of a hospital in Newcastle upon Tyne, in the UK; she also consulted widely with hospital professionals in paediatric cardiology and psychology and the Children’s Heart Foundation. “The idea was conceived in response to the overwhelming sense of a world untold, that halfway house of the transplant in which so many children and their families reside”, writes Lindow. So this is not a drama about doctors. Indeed, it is aimed partly at young
heart patients and their classmates, and contains almost no medical language. Although the surgeons are overheard off-stage in the operating theatre, only two characters appear on the stage: Cuddy and his mysterious 12-year-old friend Dan, both dressed in blue-coloured pyjamas. The set is simple, though effective: a National Health Service hospital bed. But when the coverlet is raised, various gaily coloured drawers are revealed. Gradually opened by Cuddy, they contain a storehouse of childish items. The entire bed can be transformed, too. With a stretched sheet, it becomes a base camp for adventures on a magical island, until Cuddy over-exerts himself and nearly dies of a heart attack; rotated faster and faster, it becomes a playground roundabout, from which, in reality, Cuddy once disastrously fell. As the audience enters, Cuddy lies alone clutching a puppet, motionless. He sits up and opens the play with unsentimental Northern directness:
“I could be dead.” Then Dan appears— as a disembodied hand from behind the bed, then as a sort of sprightly sprite, weaving and dipping around the bed: now Cuddy sees him, now he does not. But Dan soon becomes substantial and helps Cuddy tell his story. Yet their relationship is not clarified. Is Dan a real friend, or an imaginary one? The answer is left hanging until the very end—when Dan disappears again, and we discover that without his generosity, Cuddy would not exist. It is Dan who introduces the grim subject of surgery, forcing Cuddy to confront his anxieties, rather than dwelling in his fantasy world. Heartbreak Soup is a vigorous, imaginative, at times poetic, exploration of what is for most parents and children, thankfully, an unknown, alien world. The script is far from flawless, but the play deserves to be widely discussed.
Andrew Robinson [email protected]
www.thelancet.com Vol 378 July 2, 2011