By Camila Amieva | Contributing Writer
The Herbert and Nicole Wertheim Performing Arts Center was the first building on FIU’s campus that genuinely intrigued me when I became a freshman. With its vast concert hall and open breezeways, becoming a theatre major and being able to walk onto its stage became a goal of mine.
The artistic architecture and heart-wrenching stage performances lit a spark in me to pursue performing arts, which would later become my general love for creativity.
As I continued my studies, I was curious as to who these mysterious Wertheims were to FIU, since I noticed the College of Nursing and Health Sciences bore the same name. What I found unintentionally became my creative philosophy that I still adhere to.
As a theatre student, you learn that performance itself is not enough; often, to truly embody the character you are playing, you must meticulously study that character’s circumstances, personality, traits and relationships. There is an almost scientific quality to analyzing your character’s psyche as you rehearse.
This bridging of science and art is exactly why I admire Nicole Wertheim’s approach to philanthropy and community service. When it comes to nursing specifically, nurses are both technicians and actors to their patients; through their show of empathy and compassion, they play an extremely important role in their patients’ well-being.
Many of my classmates were nursing or pre-med majors, so there were many times in shared study sessions that I would be memorizing monologues and lines, and they would be memorizing patient cases and medical vocabulary.
Looking back, medicine is its own form of art. Each patient’s case study was a character breakdown: their backstory (medical history and symptoms), their objective (to recover), and their obstacle (the illness).
While I was training in the Stanislavski and Meisner methods of “emotional labor” to connect with my character, my classmates were using methods of kindness and comfort to connect with their patients.
Performance is often seen as deceitful or malicious in nature but true, genuine performance is about grounding your mind in the present and offering something healing to your audience.
Nicole Wertheim’s holistic viewpoint of academia and art being deeply interconnected shaped my own philosophy towards creativity. Her actions and her vision taught me the value of being multi-faceted, and that there is art in science and science in art.
Both rational thought and creative freedom must both exist in balance for students and professionals alike to lead fulfilling careers and find joy in their everyday life, no matter how bleak it may seem.
Seeing the Wertheim name appear so frequently across FIU and even on cable media reminded me that I am more than just my “niche” and more than just a job title. Nicole Wertheim, through her funding for both arts and education, believed that healthcare without humanity is incomplete and that education without creativity is flawed.
It’s been about two years since I was a theatre major, but the Wertheim legacy still impacts me as I get ready for graduation.
As I think about what I want to do with my degree and who I want to be, I will always remember that we need science to survive, but we need art to find meaning in that survival.
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The opinions presented on this page do not represent the views of the PantherNOW Editorial Board. These views are separate from editorials and reflect the perspectives of contributing writers and/or university community members.
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