Meet Marina Tsaplina, artist lead of Duke’s Reimagine Medicine project, and learn about the unique role puppetry can play in deepening the perception of how imagination, emotion, and history live in the human body.
Ruby Fridays are casual art talks offered at noon most Fridays during the semester in the Rubenstein Arts Center’s Ruby Lounge. Speakers include Duke faculty and students who are creating or exhibiting work in the Ruby, visiting artists from far and wide, and local creatives. Learn about the amazing art being created on Duke’s campus, the behind-the-scenes aspect of the creative process, careers in the arts, and more. A free lunch is included!
Marina Tsaplina is an interdisciplinary performing artist, person with type 1 diabetes since 1988, and Kienle Scholar in the medical/health humanities at the Penn State College of Medicine. Through performance, training, and pedagogy, she works with people with non-apparent and apparent conditions, medical students, healthcare providers, and the public. As artist lead and faculty of Duke’s Reimagine Medicine project, she is developing an embodied pedagogy for health education through puppetry and theater practice.
Tsaplina is an Associate of the Health Humanities Lab at Duke University and the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities and History of Medicine. From 2013 – 2017, she founded and directed THE BETES® Organization. Performing, teaching and speaking nationally and internationally to broad-ranging medical and lay communities helps hone her articulation of the nature of artistic practice, research, and inquiry for social change in medical and community contexts. Illness Revelations and The Bodies of History-Medicine-Us is her latest attempt to meet the medical gaze and its historic violations with the gaze of the imagination.
