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The October 2008 issue of Theatre Journal was bookended by articles from Jill Dolan and Dorothy Chansky that separately reevaluated two stalwarts of the second-wave feminist movement: Wendy Wasserstein (Dolan) and Betty Friedan (Chansky). Together, they marked one unofficial beginning of what has since become a vibrant contemporary movement (including my work with Roberta Barker in Canada, as well as work by Elaine Aston in the United Kingdom, and Varun Begley and Cary Mazer in the United States) to rethink, reframe, and reclaim stage realism in all of its fraught complexity. While it is impossible to recuperate stage realism naively, thanks to the robust critique leveled against it by feminist and critical race scholars over the past four decades, it is—as the above writers contend—nevertheless necessary to parse that critique with care, to distinguish among the multiple practices and strategies (dramaturgical, technical, and performative) that constitute the thing(s) we mean when we talk about “realism,” and to take the measure of the different kinds of cultural work that multiple “realisms” can do—sometimes separately, sometimes in tandem, and sometimes at tantalizing cross-purposes with one another.

My name is Ulises Pantaleon Rodriguez and I am a fourth year nursing student currently finishing my integrative practicum and final consolidation on the orthopaedic inpatient surgery floor at University Hospital in London, Ontario. I have had prior placements within this field of nursing and have been drawn towards orthopaedic placements due to my interest in sports medicine and the musculoskeletal system of the body. Through multiple orthopaedic placements I have witnessed first-hand the crippling effects of pain on patients, causing both physical and psychological distress. As a result I have encountered a multitude of different pain management control techniques ranging from pharmacological to non-pharmacological in nature. Through my experience on the orthopaedic inpatient surgery floor, I encountered the use of continuous infusion regional anesthetic catheters, commonly known as nerve block catheters. This innovative pain management technique yielded a plethora of different results for different patients, which sparked my interest into the relevant research and literature on their use. Pain management is one of the most important aspects of nursing care and the health care field as a whole, and it is my belief that healthcare practitioners must remain knowledgeable and educated on the latest techniques.