Arts & Entertainment

Review: Conflict over Indian blood study in 'Informed Consent'

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

DeLanna Studi, seated, stars in Informed Consent. Photo from Primary Stages

New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood praises Informed Consent, a play based on a controversial blood study involving the Havasupai Tribe of Arizona:

Jillian’s enthusiasm, and her obsessive dedication to her work, earn her the professional equivalent of a lottery win: Ken (Jesse J. Perez), a social anthropologist, enlists her aid in trying to help a Native American tribe in the Grand Canyon that has displayed alarming levels of obesity-related diabetes.
The tribe has only 670 living members, so the matter is of some urgency, and the tribe members’ isolation from the world makes them an ideally uncorrupted gene pool, which thrills Jillian. (The play was inspired by real events.)
“Informed Consent,” directed by Liesl Tommy (“Appropriate”) at a lightning-quick pace — a reflection of Jillian’s race against mortality — unfolds the story of Jillian’s eventually contentious interaction with the tribe and its representative, Arella (played with moving gravity by Delanna Studi), as well as with Ken and the university’s dean (a forceful Myra Lucretia Taylor). The director and excellent cast smoothly handle the play’s complex structure, with narration and choral commentary slipped into the dramatized scenes.
The first step in the study, obtaining blood samples, proves a battle because the tribe’s members believes their blood is sacred. Jillian persuades Arella — her translator and the only tribe member who speaks English — to intervene and convince as many members as possible to give up their blood, which she duly does.
And here’s where Jillian’s dedication to finding the key to the epidemic of obesity (beyond dietary matters) becomes corrupted by her belief that the study could lead to other genetic discoveries. Without giving too much away, I can say that her interest in exploiting the data for all its potential uses runs into conflict with Arella’s — and Ken’s — understanding that she was authorized to use it only for the diabetes study.

Get the Story:
Review: ‘Informed Consent’ Tests the Ethics of Genetic Research (The New York Times 8/19)