Malady Mystery Project uses theatre to support science

With fundings from the UGA Arts Collaborative, the Medical Partnership, and a Mellon Building Southern Intersectional Futures grant through the Institute for Women's and Gender Studies, the University of Georgia Malady Mystery Project blends Murder mysteries, improvisation and medical training. The innovative program invites medical students, theatre artists and faculty from to co-create  — an interdisciplinary collaboration in the form of an 1890s-inspired mystery that uses performance to examine the intersections of gender, class, disability and health. 

Through improvisation and historical research into the intersections of modern medicine, modern policing, and the mystery genre, participants explore how narratives of illness and care were shaped during the nineteenth century — and how those same structures resonate today.

Malady Mystery is co-led by Dr. Amy Baldwin of the AU/UGA Medical Partnership, Dr. Jennifer Marks, Communication Simulation Coordinator with joint appointments in UGA’s Colleges of Pharmacy and Veterinary Medicine, and Dr. Gabrielle Sinclair Compton. Marks and Compton earned a Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance Studies from UGA in 2023 and 2025, respectively.

The project was recently featured at a UGA Arts Collaborative event on arts and health, where the leaders demonstrated how improvisation and narrative techniques can translate into medical education. Fourth-year medical student Grace Snuggs also presented the work at the 2025 Kern National Network conference in Minneapolis.

“We’re not just building a mystery,” Marks said. “We’re inviting students to think about who gets believed, who gets care, and how stories about illness and disability have always been shaped by structures of power.”