Rethinking Good Intentions

London Fringe Festival August 13th, 2024 Performance of Rethinking Good Intentions
Rethinking Good Intentions is Nancy Edwards’ own story of her time as a teaching nurse in the small village of Serabu in the West African country of Sierra Leone. Like the breakthrough in her understanding of cultural divides and the bridges that can connect us, she uses the arts to share her experience. The first person recounting of her tale places the listener within the setting, using evocative imagery, and provides an understanding of the tensions she felt as the protagonist. Dr. Edwards’ low key, but evocative delivery, uses simple techniques to set and augment the mood as needed, and is supported by projected photographs that bring home the reality of the situation. While these likely facilitated her transition from lecturer to performer, the evening is all storytelling. She succeeds in encapsulating the arc of her journey from “one who didn’t know what she didn’t know” to one who uses the arts in the way they have been used for generations; to share and enlighten.​
Review by Rick, Community Member

Buxton Fringe Festival July 6th, 2024 Performance of Rethinking Good Intentions
This online performance by Canadian writer and former nurse Nancy Edwards takes us to the Sierra Leone of 1980. Nancy spent 5 years based at Serabu Hospital living on the compound itself. Her new home is far removed, physically, culturally and socially from her native Canada, and Nancy is so unsure of her place in this primitive world of village chiefs, rainforests, abundant wildlife and witch hunters that she cannot even relay observations and experiences to her own parents when she first arrives.
A change of her original role upon arrival at the hospital reduces Nancy’s confidence in herself whilst her Canadian boldness of speech then leads her into a cultural faux pas with a highly regarded village chief. And so begins Nancy’s journey in learning how to live and work successfully alongside her colleagues and patients in a country where life is so uncertain that parents give their children names which mean “let this one live”.
Interspersed with photographs to provide scene breaks and with accompanying music from the region which was recorded by Nancy herself, she takes us with ease and authenticity to the villages where she worked. Here, the Granny midwives and (often) despairing mothers of an impoverished country where infant mortality is high and medical help is extremely basic and very limited provide the backdrop.
This is a story about people of different cultures experiencing the rocky road of life together and whilst seeming to be far removed from each other, as the ending of this piece of theatre shows, unexpected connections from the past can come to greet us.
In an hour, Nancy paints for her audience a colourful canvas of her reflections upon her 5 years of living in Sierra Leone with clarity and emotion whilst keeping our interest and our desire to hear more. A praiseworthy and thought-provoking production.
Nancy’s next live performance online is on the 20th July from 5pm to 6pm where a Q&A session will also be offered.
Review by Julie Alexander

University of Toronto, Centre for Global Health, October 7th, 2024 Performance of Rethinking Good Intentions
Last October, I was a panelist for Nancy Edwards’ compelling solo play, “Rethinking Good Intentions.” It was my first time experiencing a solo performance, and I was deeply moved by Nancy’s powerful portrayal of her lived experiences as a nurse in Sierra Leone.
Her ability to use theatre as a medium to highlight pressing public health issues was genuinely inspiring. I was particularly intrigued by how she brought an “outsider” perspective to culture and used the arts to engage audiences in critical global health conversations.
The play captivated me emotionally and intellectually, and I was fortunate to interview Nancy afterward to explore the intersection of art and public health further. This experience reinforced the transformative potential of creative approaches in fostering dialogue around global health challenges.
A heartfelt thank you to Nancy for her incredible performance and to the Centre for Global Health at Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto for providing me the opportunity to participate in this enriching event. Contributing to the discussion and seeing storytelling’s role in driving social impact was an honour.
Review posted by Diana Kaliza on Linked In (January, 2025) https://lnkd.in/dkESGNSh

Recap by Dahdaleh Global Health Graduate Scholar Alexandra Frankel (https://www.yorku.ca/dighr/recap-rethinking-good-intentions-storytelling-and-epistemic-humility-as-critical-interventions-in-global-health/).
Dr. Nancy Edwards’ one-woman performance Rethinking Good Intentions (1 hour 3 minutes) opens with two lines she meticulously deconstructs throughout her play: “There is not much of anything here” and “I just want to help.” Rethinking Good Intentions is a critical and moving reflection on Edwards’ own experiences as a white Canadian public health nurse in Sierra Leone in the 1970s and ’80s. Her performance — a collage of reenactments, commentaries, and asides to the audience — articulates a deep process of unlearning that, for Edwards, gained momentum in Sierra Leone.
Rethinking Good Intentions interrogates and wrestles with this desire “to help.” Rather than traditional academic critique, her critique unfolds through embodied and emotional storytelling that grapples with the interwoven—and uneven—geographies of authoritative knowledge, power, and capital in global health and development fields. Edwards invited the York University audience to rethink good intentions as connected to 1) the production of authoritative knowledge in global health and development institutions, and 2) histories of domination and violence.
Edwards organized her performance around multiple iterations of not knowing. She reenacted her difficulty with Mende, affecting a thick Canadian accent. When Edwards first arrived in the Bumpe Chiefdom, she recounted refusing the gift from the chief whose village she was visiting, much to the consternation of her colleagues. She received a reassignment—no longer would she be training public health nurses in the clinic but would be supervising student fieldwork, an area fully new to her. In one telling vignette, we learn that on one of her field visits, a village chief explained that produce had to be carried from the farms and through a swamp to the village: “We need a bridge over the swamp.” Edwards reflected that she was a public health nurse equipped to answer questions about malaria, not bridges.
Throughout the performance, moments such as these hung in the air without resolution. These moments pushed the audience to confront the epistemological siloing that global and public health institutions simultaneously reflect and produce. As it is these siloes, taken for granted as natural orderings of knowledge, that produce bridges over swamps as distinct from malaria responses and interventions. This focus on not knowing creates space for simultaneously learning and unlearning.

Content warnings: Mentions of sensitive topics including slavery and maternal and newborn deaths.

Sensory warnings: None.

For more accessibility information see the Accessibility at the Fringe page on our website.