Training Actors’ Knowledge of the Lived Experience of People With Advanced Dementia

Do professional actors playing someone with dementia in training situations have knowledge of what it is like to be someone with dementia? And what knowledge? In preparation of a phenomenological study into the experience of people with advanced dementia in residential care, we interviewed four of these actors. Reflecting on their own experience with people with dementia and other experiences in their life enabled them to explore and find a reservoir of movements, gestures, postures, gazes, emotions, and responses from which they draw during their play. This reservoir is confirmed and refined in their playing persons with dementia. Their preparation, experience while playing, and reflection, validated by the response from caregivers, family members and people with dementia, make their knowledge as near as we can get to the experience of people with advanced dementia. Taking in this knowledge contributes to a larger repertoire to draw from in practising moral imagination.