YUKIO MISHIMA’S SWADDLING 

CLOTHES
tivity 4 B. Staging the Play
Romeo & Juliet: Act 1, Scene 1
Verona. A public place.
(Sampson; Gregory; Abram; Balthasar; Benvolio; Tybalt; Citizens; Capulet;
Lady Capulet; Montague; Lady Montague; Prince Escalus; Romeo)
Enter Sampson and Gregory, with swords and bucklers, of the house of
Capulet.
SAMPSON

The “Reading and Writing About Sickness and Health” course

taught by Steve Langan, Director of the Medical Humanities
program at UNO, allows students to explore various themes of the
human experience in healthcare by reading and discussing short
stories, poems, creative nonfiction pieces and more. In turn, the
students also work to write and present their personal health and
illness autobiographies.
The latter portion of the class involves playwriting, specifically
producing scripts for one-act plays. To help the students
accomplish this, enter Stephen Cedars and Julia Hansen of
Theater for Social Change.
Theater for Social Change is a New York City-based residency
program that brings playwriting to universities as a vehicle for
storytelling and better understanding the essential social issues of
our time. Cedars and Hansen have been traveling to Omaha to
share their expertise and guide UNO students in this course for the
last several years.
Students are invited to write plays on any medical, healthcare, and
social issues that come to mind. With the ongoing coronavirus
pandemic in spring 2020, students didn’t need to look far for
possible topics.
“Drama is a way that one can grapple with really big, important
social questions,” Cedars says. “And thus far over the years, we
feel more and more certain that's true.”
“Drama is a way that one can grapple with really big, important social questions. And
thus far over the years, we feel more and more certain that's true.”

- Stephen Cedars, Theater for Social Change

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