Come experience stress-relieving, creative, and refreshing ways to discern and share what you know to be true from facing cancer as a patient, caregiver, healthcare provider, health communication researcher or advocate. 

InterPlay methods are designed for all bodies, just as they are — all people, across, pain, fatigue, and mobility differences are welcome. Building unique skills to restore ourselves amidst overwhelm, we will engage in movement and stillness, improvisational tools for storytelling, vocal and breath relaxation, and be supported by live sound healing music. 

As we struggle to feel at home in our own bodies, tend to compassion fatigue, or navigate chronic stress, how can we also reside in our power, humor, grief, honesty, and interconnection as people facing cancers?

Why do cancer stories matter, and how do they shape cultures of healthcare, environmental, and economic action? Cancer narratives are often treated as currency for fundraising campaigns, or as anecdotes of bad luck, separate from the environments and inequities they arise from and reveal. 

With community-based partnerships, personal and professional experience in health communication, Garlock engages advanced cancer experiences through performance research that spans creative workshops in clinical settings, narrative testimony for civil rights and policy advocacy, and artistic translation of oral histories with patients, family caregivers, and healthcare providers. 

The resulting Flipping Cancer project asks: whose stories are excluded from mainstream cancer communication, and when centered instead, how can they mobilize policy and cultural change for health justice?

What can we learn about healthcare from centering stage IV cancer perspectives, or about health equity from people living in environmental health sacrifice zones? What happens when we open space for issues often considered too taboo for cancer fundraising campaigns? 

Come engage with the wisdoms of people facing cancers creatively and courageously, who hope their stories will activate a more just and healthy future.