other passions
Stefan Neszpor
StefanNeszpor(left),canbecontactedby
[email protected].
PSyCHIATRIST,ACTOR
MBBS1974
FRCPC,CGP,CC
S
tefan Neszpor discovered his passion for theatre as a medical student
and has lived out his theatrical ambitions on stage and in his work as
a psychiatrist.
During medical school, things theatrical seemed to be like a magnet
with an irresistible attraction, he says. His first role was in a film for the
Medical Society which saw him co-opting fellow students into a Monty
Python ad for the Ball. He enjoyed it and continued performing in the
annual hospital reviews at Sydney Hospital.
“I thought when my hospital days ended, my drama days had ended
too.”
He was attracted to psychiatry, despite having been underwhelmed
with it at medical school. Life began imitating art when, in 1990, during
a training session in psychotherapy in Canada, he took on the role of an
auditionee for NIDA. He did an audition performing Mark Anthony’s
famous speech from Julius Caesar.
This experience proved inspirational and he decided to really audition
for NIDA. “I was probably their oldest ever entrant and probably their
only psychiatrist.” He did the Julius Caesar speech again as well as a piece
38rADIUSjuly10
as the psychiatrist from Equiis, which seemed second nature. He wasn’t
selected for NIDA and, again, thought this was the end of his acting days.
It wasn’t to be the case. Before the beginning of a season of One Flew
Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, a friend asked whether he would read a few lines
in the play as one of their actors was ill. He went along and ended up
selected to play the role of Chief Bromden in the play.
“Much to my surprise I fitted into the role with relative ease and the
prior preparation for NIDA kicked in like auto pilot.”
Back in the land of psychotherapy, he says acting has reaffirmed the
power of experience as a motivator for helping people make changes in
their lives. Working with couples, he now gets them to act out conflicts
and then deconstruct the fight, looking for new ways to play out the
script. The role play helps shift deadlocks and become more resourceful,
drawing on other possible ways of acting with each other.
His experience as an actor has reaffirmed his desire to train others in
these methods as a way of helping people find ways of engaging with
themselves and their passions. radius