The Wisdom of “Wit”

The Center for Ethics, Humanities & Spirituality at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC) will host, The Wisdom of “Wit,” at 6 p.m. Jan. 8 at the TTUHSC Academic Classroom Building Room 150, located at 3601 Fourth St.

Megan Cole will perform the dramatized lecture of Margaret Edson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play.  The Wisdom of “Wit” is a sardonic, funny and heart-wrenching exploration of the beauty of simplicity and the puzzle of our irrevocable fate, as seen through the eyes of a 50-year-old professor of English literature who has been diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

In The Wisdom of “Wit,” she leads the audience through the play’s gripping story, alternately acting every character and interpreting the play’s perspectives on important end-of-life issues. The play is intended for educational purposes in medical schools, health care facilities and all organizations whose goal is the care and well-being of patients and those who love them.

In 2000, after performing at the Houston’s Alley Theater, Cole began to develop a course for medical students that proposed applying various skills from the profession of theater to the practice of medicine. Creating this course led her to work in other areas of health care education.

At the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, Cole developed workshops on empathic physician-patient communication, as well as literature and the art of medicine. She now takes these workshops and other related performances to health care and end-of-life care venues across the country.

Cole has had a long acting career on the professional stage and made television guest-star appearances on “Seinfeld,” “ER,” “Star Trek,” “The Practice,” “Judging Amy,” and many others. She originated the leading role "Wit" in 1995, for which she received the L.A. Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Outstanding Performance.

The performance is free to the public. For more information, call Rachel Forbes at (806) 743-2820 ext. 229 or email rachel.forbes@ttuhsc.edu.

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