Reflecting on the Process: Devising an Interactive Murder Mystery Using Medical Improv
Jennifer Marks
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JENNIFER MARKS earned her Ph.D. in performance from the University of Georgia. Her dissertation analyzes nostalgia and American identity in interactive murder mysteries staged on trains and boats. She has an M.A. (English), has published poetry and short prose, and taught professional writing. Her research and teaching explore intersections of performance, identity, medicine, and communication. She has a joint faculty position with UGA’s College of Veterinary Medicine and College of Pharmacy, where she trains simulated patients/clients in the health and life sciences. She also uses acting tools, including improvisation, to help veterinary students develop their communication and clinical skills as well as their professional identities.
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Abstract
The Malady Mysteries Project is an interdisciplinary practice-as-research project led by students and faculty in theatre and medicine. Our project opens actors and audiences to a world inhabited by people with chronic illness and disability, creating a space to work out the anxieties of the present within the safety of the past to give us hope and promise for the future. During the first year of the project, we hosted several devising sessions to develop our mystery and gave an introductory interactive performance designed to immerse audiences in the nineteenth century at the intersection between medicine, mystery, and policing. Our devisers and actors are students and faculty in theatre and medicine as well as faculty in various disciplines across the university. We created dynamic characters and set them in 1892 Radium Springs, GA, in a former family home turned health haven and hotel run by sideshow medicine man Doc Haverly. Prioritizing discovery through process rather than final product, we are investigating the mystery genre and its use of nostalgia and character tropes, using a Neo-Victorian lens to challenge common tropes around illness and disability. As our actors and audiences interact, we want to make the invisible visible and create possibilities that were not available to many at the time, thus resonating with our current historical moment. What we created together as we discovered the various elements of the play in each session fostered hope and community within our interprofessional group. The process led to challenges and growth from the core investigators and their devising team, from representing illness and disability in the devising process, creating a setting that would reflect the work we are doing, and learning to navigate and appreciate the untethered creative journey that improv and devising can bring.
The Malady Mysteries Project is an interdisciplinary practice-as-research project led by students and faculty in theatre and medicine. Our project opens actors and audiences to a world inhabited by people with chronic illness and disability, creating a space to work out the anxieties of the present within the safety of the past to give us hope and promise for the future. During the first year of the project, we hosted several devising sessions to develop our mystery and gave an introductory interactive performance designed to immerse audiences in the nineteenth century at the intersection between medicine, mystery, and policing. Our devisers and actors are students and faculty in theatre and medicine as well as faculty in various disciplines across the university. We created dynamic characters and set them in 1892 Radium Springs, GA, in a former family home turned health haven and hotel run by sideshow medicine man Doc Haverly. Prioritizing discovery through process rather than final product, we are investigating the mystery genre and its use of nostalgia and character tropes, using a Neo-Victorian lens to challenge common tropes around illness and disability. As our actors and audiences interact, we want to make the invisible visible and create possibilities that were not available to many at the time, thus resonating with our current historical moment. What we created together as we discovered the various elements of the play in each session fostered hope and community within our interprofessional group. The process led to challenges and growth from the core investigators and their devising team, from representing illness and disability in the devising process, creating a setting that would reflect the work we are doing, and learning to navigate and appreciate the untethered creative journey that improv and devising can bring.
| etudesdec2025marks.pdf |
