Performance and Cure: Drama and Healing in Ancient Greece and Contemporary America

In this fascinating addition to the Classical Inter/faces series, Karelisa V. Hartigan suggests that drama was regularly performed in the theatres built within or adjacent to the ancient sanctuaries of Asklepios. She argues that a pageant which showed the enactment of the god healing prompted the dream therapy the patient experienced at the sanctuary. Patients who viewed this drama were ready to receive the nightly ministrations of the deity, his attendants and his animals while they slept ...