A new performance illuminates the health care disparities faced by African-American men in an extraordinary way.
By Rose Hoban
In North Carolina, African-American men are more than twice as likely as white men to die prematurely from prostate cancer. They’re twice as likely as whites to die from kidney disease.
And more likely to die from diabetes.
And heart disease.
And stroke.
And HIV.
And other treatable, preventable diseases.
That black men die younger than whites wasn’t a complete surprise to four black men who met and discussed their health in a focus group in Durham on Tuesday evening.
The men – a young ex-convict, an older man who lost half his leg to diabetes, a homeless man and a highly educated executive – had been invited to the group to talk about what’s kept them from seeking health care. And they each expressed how they faced a deck stacked against them.
Each had different reasons for not seeing the doctor, from having no insurance, to the physical discomfort of exams, to feeling demeaned in the doctor’s office. But the men all had one thing in common: they were characters being acted out by Durham-based performance artist Anita Woodley.
Woodley’s performance was the first public showing of a new one-woman show, Bucking the Medical and Mental Bull, based on feedback from more than 350 black men from Durham who participated in actual focus groups.
Woodley plays each of the men, as well as an increasingly uncomfortable white female researcher who conducts the group, using information gathered by the nonprofit public-health research organization FHI 360, which is headquartered in Research Triangle Park.
And based on the howls of laughter, the calls of “Tell it, girl!” and sustained applause at the end of the show, Woodley seemed to have struck a chord with the audience of several hundred people – black and white – at the Carolina Theater.
Bringing public health to life
Researchers from FHI 360 were looking to explore how to reduce the health disparities between white and black men in North Carolina, so they advertised around Durham for men to participate in the focus groups.
Researcher Emily Namey said she worried men in Durham wouldn’t be interested in talking about their health, but she was wrong.
“People came out of the woodwork,” Namey said. “I’d come in and have 90 messages on my voicemail.”
She said the men didn’t hold back when asked about their experiences with the health care system.
“I never got bored because these guys were so wide open,” said Namey, who conducted the focus groups from January to June of 2013. “They were very emotional and passionate about what they were saying, and there were funny, poignant things.”
“It would be hard to write a peer-reviewed journal article with all this information.”
And that’s what gave Namey and her colleagues the idea to do something different, and more engaging, with their data.
Woodley’s other one-woman shows, Mama Juggs and The Men in Me, have also dealt with public-health issues such as breast cancer, domestic violence, drugs and AIDS. Along the way she’s gained a national reputation for her performances.
When the FHI 360 researchers saw Woodley perform, they knew they wanted to ask her to do something to make their research come alive.
Kool-Aid and copays
Woodley listened to dozens of hours of focus group tapes, gleaning lines directly from the participants and placing them into the mouths of her characters. She didn’t act so much as channel the men, moving seamlessly from one character to another, changing her voice and body language as she went.
As the angry young ex-con Conscious Rap, Woodley slouched and strutted, expressing his frustration with only getting health care in prison and not having money for a copay when he went to the clinic upon release.
“Twenty dollars … that copay got me messed up,” the character yelled, throwing his arms out in frustration. “Not everybody got 20 damned dollars!”
As character Luther R&B, Woodley crooned while she mixed up a pitcher of red Kool-Aid, dumping four pounds of sugar into a quart jar, “just the way my aunt did when I was young.”
The audience hooted and called out.
That scene hit a nerve with Dennis Hamlet, who after the show said his mom made Kool-Aid in a similar way.
“We called it syrup,” Hamlet said. When asked if he drank it, he laughed, “I would drink the whole pitcher!”
Woodley hit on topics ranging from the reluctance of some men to have a doctor touch their buttocks for a prostate exam or colonoscopy to the frustration of being in an exam room and having researchers walk in when they were at their most vulnerable.
“You’re a black man, you’re in there in a gown with your butt hanging out, and then 15 white students walk in” Woodley said before the show. “They’re like, ‘I don’t want to do this when I go to the doctor.… There’s not supposed to be an audience.’”
Woodley said that as she wrote the show, she felt honored to give public voice to the feelings these men expressed during the privacy of the focus groups. She wanted to dispel some of the stereotypes of black men and show how they think about the health care system.
“I wanted to expose people to the different flavors of the culture,” she said. “Some of them are bitter.”
And she said she hopes health care providers who see the performance will think about how they encounter their black male patients.
“I think it’ll be informative for all, and those who are in the health care profession will see missteps,” Woodley said. “It’s a time for reflection for them.”
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This performance hit home on so many levels as it relates to our Black men. Anita Woodley was brilliant in her performance ! Each and every individual on our row during the performance could relate to one or more of the characters. Health Disparities is a difficult subject to tackle,so Hats off to FHI360 for choosing such an innovative way to disseminate results.