Grafting Orchids and Ugly: Theatre, Disability and Arts-Based Health Research

Theatre-based health policy research is an emerging field, and this article investigates the work of one of its leaders. In 2005, prominent medical geneticist and playwright Jeff Nisker and his collaborators produced Orchids, his play concerning pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, to research theatre as a tool for engaging citizens in health policy development. Juxtaposing Orchids with a concurrent disability theatre production in Vancouver entitled Ugly, I argue that disability theatre suggests important means for building inclusiveness in this kind of research and complicates Nisker’s own call for international guidelines to delimit how journalists, playwrights, filmmakers, physicians and other media authors share genetics-based narratives in public.