The "Patients and Performance: Healthcare Method Acting" workshop will train community members to play the roles of standardized patients, in our state-of-the-art Simulation Center. Standardized patients are a key component to the Egan School curricula at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Standardized patient actors learn to portray patients with a variety of healthcare needs and to interact with students in order to help them develop their skills as healthcare providers. The workshop will be held from Friday, September 20 through Sunday, September 22 and is free and open to the public.

In exchange for completing the free three-day workshop, participants are asked to commit to 10 unpaid hours of standardized patient acting. Upon fulfilling the 10-hour commitment, simulation actors are eligible to earn $15/per hour. Each day of the workshop, participants will layer acting methods in improvisation with empathy building experiences to allow them to immerse themselves in the role of a patient. Participants will need to attend all three sessions. The Simulation Center is accredited in teaching and education through the Society for Simulation in Healthcare.

The workshop will be taught by Michael Cicirelli ’11, APRN, and Tom Schwans, MFA, an adjunct professor in the Visual & Performing Arts Department at Fairfield University.

Michael Cicirelli is a certified advanced practice nurse who has been a member of the CT ENT Sinus Center Team in Norwalk, Conn. since 2015. He graduated from Fairfield University with a bachelor's degree in nursing and joined Yale New Haven Hospital's nursing transplant team in 2011. He then became an assistant patient care manager at Norwalk Hospital. During this time, he obtained his master’s degree in nursing and became board certified through the ANCC as a family nurse practitioner in 2015. Cicirelli has experience in treating patients at all stages of life, and he enjoys working to establish a beneficial relationship with the families and patients he serves.

Tom Schwans is a professional actor and director in New York City. He is the co-founder and executive director of the Guerrilla Shakespeare Project in NYC, and previously served as an associate artistic director of the Old Creamery Theatre in Iowa and as interim artistic director of the Deertrees Theatre Festival in Maine. Tom is a guest director and adjunct professor at Fairfield University; he also has many private acting lesson clients in NYC. He holds an MFA from Brown University and has taught at Brown, Quinnipiac University, and Southern Connecticut State.

To register and learn more about the certificate program, please visit fairfield.edu/sonacting.