Unlearning to Learn: Nancy Edwards’ ‘Rethinking Good Intentions’
Set in the rural villages of Sierra Leone in the 1970s-1980s, Nancy Edwards’ Rethinking Good Intentions retraces the steps taken towards providing medicinal aid during her teaching nurse residency at Serabu Hospital. I was lucky enough to attend one of her performances as a part of Theatre Kingston’s Fringe Festival.
Driven by a deep respect for the oral traditions of the Mende people, Edwards delivers her story as a one-woman narration-play. The show unfolds in a series of personal accounts detailing her cultural fumbles, learning moments, and medicinal progress. The trials and errors of her experience, including the obstacle of cultural stigmas surrounding malaria and the breakthrough of using theatre to relay health education, all guide her towards a wider understanding of world-wide healthcare. The undertaking of a healer—a Hippocratic promise to do no harm—proves difficult to honour so far from home, in a place where you do not fully understand what harm you may cause.
The scene is set sonically, with the musical compositions of the Mende people as recorded by Nancy Edwards herself circa 1978. She is joined onstage by the minimalistic addition of two chairs draped in patterned fabrics and a projection screen.
I greatly enjoyed Edwards’ mode of storytelling: her patience with her words, the plainness of her presentation, the calmness of her demeanour. Edwards builds a setting out of air, introducing movement as an integral part of her tale. There exists within her a sort of clarity of memory—she knows her story well. She relives moments onstage, miming the same actions she took decades before: tending to a child, riding a bike, shaking hands. Today, her hands cup empty air filled with memories, and we are invited to share them.
Names echo and putter out. Across a canyon of time, resident helper Paul offers his translation skills and advice, Sister Hilary deals out assignments, traditional birth attendants offer and seek wisdom. Nancy Edwards repeats their teachings in a vow of remembrance.
Rethinking Good Intentions is a discussion of processes: the process of cross-cultural communication, of problem solving, of learning, and of sharing knowledge.
The historical context of her lived experience is never abandoned; Edwards takes care not to overshadow the economical and political state of Sierra Leone with some heightened mythos of how her valiance as a nurse came to save the Mende people from themselves, as is so often the unfortunate case in these narratives. She acknowledges the exploitation by foreign mining companies, the impact of the transatlantic slave trade, and contemplates her relation to the problem, recognizing the involved history of Nova Scotia, her mother’s birthplace. She takes in the sobering realisation of how Sierra Leone had never been far away from her at all: the exploitation of the land and its people had long been affecting her life. Without forcing any narrative motivations on the testimony, her retelling has a genuine emotional arc.
Her delivery is not exaggerated or built up for laughs or audience reaction: she tells it like the truth. There was no attempt to impress, only to share, and I was more than happy to listen.
‘Rethinking Good Intentions’ runs until August 16 at the Tett Centre as part of the 2026 TK Fringe Festival. For tickets and more information, click here.
