The Naples Press 7/26/2024
Practice. Hard work. Delving deeply into characters. Making it real. Actors with The Naples Players are used to all of that when staging a play or musical. Now they break new ground by bringing those same skill sets to bear on community front-line public safety and health care training. A team of experienced volunteer actors is quietly working behind the scenes to help the Collier County Sheriff ’s Office, Naples Comprehensive Health and others practice for crisis situations. Leaders of the organizations agree the actors lend a better, heightened degree of realism— superior to students and staffs practicing with friends, who are easier to anticipate and manipulate. The actors, often trained in quick-thinking improvisation, are far less predictable. Trainees, whose responses are critiqued, can expect the unexpected from these strangers.
Behind the scenes at NCH
NCH is so committed to staff training at all levels that a special 12,000-squarefoot, state-of-the-art simulation center has been built at the downtown campus. Its director, Dr. Doug Harrington, who trained for a year at simulation centers at Mayo Clinic sites in Jacksonville and Rochester, Minnesota, said the center follows the lead of military units and airlines that train on equipment such as flight simulators. The NCH simulation center includes fully equipped operating and patient treatment rooms, a 3D copier that can fabricate wounds from photos and a “mixed reality” room that can portray plane crashes, with injured victims needing help, on touch-screen walls. Such training, Harrington said, is 85% more effective than books or lectures. Harrington, who practices critical care and pulmonary medicine, said the center can stage crises ranging from operating room fires to heart attacks. The actors come into play for drills. One scenario simulates telling a bedded patient and family about a medical mistake that has been made. The news is delivered by a doctor in the NCH medical residency program. NCH staff can observe through one-way windows—and communicate via earbuds with actors to push back on residents who seem too nonchalant. The goal is teaching them to be honest, caring and sorry, Harrington said. Actors’ other roles can include people in need of calming counsel, such as agitated, confused patients or disgruntled employees. It all adds up to a healthier and happier community, Harrington said, and the actors play strategic roles. “Every one of them is amazing,” he added. “The Naples Players is the best.” Harrington said it is unusual for a relatively small hospital to have a simulation center, and NCH’s has earned a ranking among the top 35 in America. (Tours are available by emailing simulation@nchmd.org.) NCH said the center, named for donors Judith and Marvin Herb, “demonstrates a steadfast commitment to producing skilled, confident and compassionate healthcare professionals” who have already streamlined emergency heart care and coach health professionals from Emergency Medical Services and Collier County Public Schools.
On the crime beat
Lt. Brian Sawyer, leader of the CCSO’s hostage negotiation team, is even more enthused. He coined his own version of “crazy good,” calling the actors “stupid fabulous.” Sawyer said the Naples Players partnership keeps getting better, and salutes troupe leader James Duggan for “passion like I have never seen before.” Sawyer said scenarios have included barricaded kidnappers, violent spouses and people threatening suicide. Duggan also recalls portrayals of drug addicts and child molesters. Training, which can also include Naples Police Department officers, takes place at The Innovation Hotel on the North Naples campus of Arthrex. Sawyer said Arthrex offers them hotel rooms that are far enough apart to permit several drills to take place at the same time. He said actors engage in dialogue with first responders, though the actors do not use improvisational devices to keep conversations going. Actors leave that up to the officers, and actors are asked afterward what officers did that raised or soothed tensions. “We do not teach the police,” Duggan pointed out. “We challenge them.” The drill is so intense, Duggan said, that the acting team meets for a meal to build stamina before each session, where actors let loose with anger, screaming and crying—a draining experience that he said leaves everyone in need of sleep. “We mean it when we say ‘we do the work,’” said Duggan, “and the stakes are high for us to do the work properly.” Although Duggan is on staff at The Naples Players as a paid stage production director and supervisor of patron services, he and his acting team—Tina Morni, Luke Jaconis, Jen Hart, Amy Hughes and Summer Pliskow—offer their services without pay. “We are a community theater and this is our way of giving back to the community,” he explained. “It is a high honor to do what we do. Our talents and services are not used just on stage.”
Part of the package
While noteworthy, the Players’ crisis services are not the only offerings that go above and beyond yet cruise under the public radar. TNP pays special attention to community members with autism and other sensory issues by tailoring one performance of each major production just for them and their families. Crowds are limited to half-capacity, and lights and sound effects are toned down. Patrons are allowed to relax and roam the theater—and even talk back to the actors on stage. In addition, the TNP’s $21.5 million theater makeover includes a balcony booth that allows families and friends inside to enjoy entire shows with controlled sound and lights. Another TNP enterprise offers skilled professional training to hundreds of developmentally disabled school students every year to help them communicate and get along with others, and prepare for successful job interviews. TNP CEO and Executive Artistic Director Bryce Alexander connected the dots by saying TNP is redefining American theater. At a preview performance at the refurbished and expanded theater on Fifth Avenue South, he took the stage to say if every theater organization followed TNP’s lead, America would be a different place. “This is another wonderful example of that,” he said of the actors’ project. “We can impact so many different facets of the community.”
