A new play opening at the Hopkins Center in Hanover, N.H. takes a scalpel to health care issues, presenting slices of history, present-day challenges, and future hopes. It’s a collaboration among two socially-minded theater groups, Dartmouth Medical School and local non-profits that serve low-income people.
A few days before opening night, actors ate dinner at a community center in White River Junction to share experiences with local residents and preview a scene from the play.
It’s bad enough — sometimes tragic — to get sick. But when illness leads to a wild, costly goose chase through a maze of providers, insurance carriers, and employers — well, that’s exactly what happens in the scene the actors previewed.
A gray-haired man stepped to the front of the room, surrounded by fellow actors, and started telling his story.
“Yeah, I had an eye operation in Amsterdam on my retina, a retinal detachment on October 4, 1996, and then two months later, I had a second eye operation, also in the Netherlands, because it didn’t stick,” he began.
That autobiographical narrator is John Malpede, director of a theater group based in Los Angeles called the LAPD — Los Angeles Poverty Department. LAPD, which includes actors who have been homeless, teamed up to create this play with a Dutch troupe called Wunderbaum, also featured in the preview.
Throughout the scene, many diners nodded and even groaned, as if these plot lines mirrored some of their own hard-luck, real-life experiences.
“Your call is very important to us,” a woman says officiously. "Please stay on the line.”
That leads to a flurry of phone calls, because somehow Malpede’s employer has let his health insurance lapse just when he needs it most. It turns out it paid the premiums by mistake, so the insurance carrier is forced to cover the hospital costs, after all. But the insurer is charged just a small fraction of what Malpede would have been required to pay out of his own pocket.
“They get to negotiate the price with the hospital, but the poor insured saps like John or maybe some of us, we got to pay retail,” another actor laments.
Throughout the scene, many diners nodded and even groaned, as if these plot lines mirrored some of their own hard-luck, real-life experiences. One of the diners was Robert Peterson, who has diabetes and a seizure disorder.
“I take two medications that are over $1,000 a refill per month, and there’s no way I could afford $1,000 a month for a refill to keep myself standing up,” Peterson told his table mates.
Peterson eats dinner here almost every night with his wife, Nancy, and his mother, who lives with them. He gets some insurance through his wife’s workplace, Wal-Mart, but also needs Medicaid to cover the supplemental costs of treating his diseases. He says Vermont has been a great place to access health care, especially compared to the state he moved from, Michigan.
“At that time, I was having more seizures back then. I was diagnosed (with) diabetes back then and because I didn’t have any insurance I couldn’t afford the testing or the other health care that I needed to help me get better," he recalled.
Now Peterson says he is getting excellent care in the Upper Valley. He is also the father of a 15-year-old with mild cerebral palsy, who he says has also benefited from the move to Vermont.
But others at the dinner told less upbeat stories, about being denied insurance, or not affording it, or getting sub-standard care.
All that is fodder for the kind of theater LAPD and Wunderbaum like to create — plays based on real-life issues. Henriette Brouwers, associate director of the LAPD, said the play shines a spotlight on health care, past, present, and future.
[Carey] said that the line between the haves and have-nots at this dinner may be more precarious than it appears, because one health emergency can turn even a middle-class life upside down.
“So that people know the development of it and the challenges that we face today, but it starts peoples’ imaginations about where it could go, or what is wrong with it, or what is needed,” she said.
Thespians were not the only listeners in this community conversation. Dartmouth students took notes at each table, so the dinner table stories can be shared with ReThink Health, a group of Upper Valley community members addressing wellness and health care issues.
Dawn Carey helps manage community partnerships at the new Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science. She said that the line between the haves and have-nots at this dinner may be more precarious than it appears, because, as in playwright John Malpede’s case, one health emergency can turn even a middle-class life upside down.
“And I think one of the things that resonates in the Upper Valley is that many people are just one paycheck away or one insurance situation away from having to use some of the resources that people here involved in the community dinner are probably accessing,” Carey said.
Those community dinner guests were offered free admission and transportation to the play, and several said they would like to attend. “Hospital” will be performed at the Hopkins Center on Jan. 18 and 19 at 8 p.m., and both performances will be followed by discussions with the actors.
