In 2000, the theatre director Caroline Smith nursed her brother through a terminal illness and, in the process, discovered that reading to him was a great source of stimulation. She promptly set up a charity that takes professional actors into hospitals to read poetry and stories to stroke survivors. Nearly a quarter of a century later InterAct Stroke Support operates all over the UK: a year ago, it made its first foray into Northern Ireland where Ciarán Hinds led a day of meeting patients at Belfast’s Whiteabbey hospital.
My own interest in InterAct was piqued by several things: living near to Caroline and her actor-husband, Christopher Ravenscroft; attending the charity’s recent short-story competition judged by Margaret Drabble; and having a natural curiosity about the multiple things actors do when they are not on stage or screen. So when I was invited to watch InterAct at work on a baking hot afternoon at the Charing Cross hospital in London I leapt at the chance.
