© 2024 St. Louis Public Radio
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Cut & Paste: A Doctor Who Sings, Or A Singer Who Heals? For Ken Haller, It's All Connected

Ken Haller is a pediatrician and an accomplished cabaret performing. He performs his latest work, "The Medicine Show," at Blue Strawberry in March.  [2/5/19]
Jeremy D. Goodwin | St. Louis Public Radio
Ken Haller is a pediatrician and an accomplished cabaret performer. He performs his latest work, "The Medicine Show," at Blue Strawberry in March.

As a pediatrician who is also an accomplished cabaret artist, Dr. Ken Haller says he may play several roles over the course of a day: teacher, doctor, friend, singer. He says those roles are all different aspects of his chief pursuit: being a healer.

Haller explores the link between arts and healing in an improvisational acting course he leads at St. Louis University School of Medicine and in his latest cabaret show, “The Medicine Show,” which he’ll perform at Blue Strawberry in St. Louis on March 14. It’s also the subject of a five-year effort recently launched by the Arts & Education Council with help from an $850,000 grant from the Missouri Foundation for Health, called the Arts and Healing Initiative. 

He says some of the efforts to explore the relationship between arts and healing in the St. Louis region could prove to be national models.

In this episode of Cut & Paste, Haller also explores:

  • What it means to be a “citizen artist.”
  • How the principles of improv comedy affect how he interacts with patients. 
  • The importance of doctors putting themselves in the shoes of their patients.
Cut & Paste logo current summer 2018

Look for new Cut & Paste podcastsevery month on our website or your favorite podcast app. You can find all previous podcasts here.

The podcast is sponsored by JEMA Architects, Planners and Designers.

Follow Jeremy on Twitter @JeremyDGoodwin

Please help St. Louis Public Radio find creative people to feature on Cut & Paste. Tell us which artists and cultural drivers deserve a closer look.

Jeremy is the arts & culture reporter at St. Louis Public Radio.