UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — William J. Doan, director of Penn State’s School of Theatre, will be the guest presenter at the 2018 Jean Vallance Lecture in Nursing Innovation on Friday, April 6. The lecture will start at 4:30 p.m. in Ruth Pike Auditorium, 22 Biobehavioral Health Building, on the University Park campus.
Doan will present "Drifting," a solo performance journey into traumatic brain injury, sibling loss and the need to make art. "Drifting" blends live performance with drawings and film sequences, taking the audience inside the intimate experience of an artist’s effort to make meaning out of trauma. The solo performance — incorporating his work investigating brain injury, consciousness, identity and anxiety — was presented in June 2017 at the Royal Family Performing Arts Space in New York. The play upon which his performance is based had a workshop production in 2015 at Dixon Place Theatre in New York and two graphic narratives in Annals Graphic Medicine/Annals of Internal Medicine. A graphic novel about the play is currently in development.
The Jean Vallance Lecture in Nursing Innovation is an endowed lecture series presented by Penn State’s College of Nursing to honor Jean S. Vallance, a 30-year resident of State College who passed away in 1997. Vallance helped organize the Family Planning Clinic, later known as Family Health Services, to bring low-cost health care to women in central Pennsylvania. She was among the first nurses in Pennsylvania to be registered as a certified registered nurse practitioner. Her husband, Theodore Vallance, was a former associate dean in the College of Health and Human Development and avid supporter of the College of Nursing.
For more information, visit www.nursing.psu.edu/vallance.