Dramatic Shift
Claudine Hennessey traded her acting dreams for a life working to improve healthcare in South Africa
Claudine Hennessey is working to improve the healthcare sector in South Africa, which is near the top of the list globally for cases of tuberculosis and HIV. Photo by Paul Samuels
Dramatic Shift
Claudine Hennessey traded her acting dreams for a life working to improve healthcare in South Africa
Claudine Hennessey is sitting in the dark. Again. For the umpteenth time this week, the electricity has been turned off in her section of Cape Town, South Africa, because demand has overwhelmed the energy grid. The regular blackouts, called “load shedding,” are sometimes announced ahead of time, but they can happen with little notice. The government is telling residents to prepare for as many as 12 hours of load shedding a day in the near future. A portable battery pack powers a small lamp and keeps Hennessey’s laptop running so she can do most of her work (and answer Zoom calls from BU reporters).
Low-income South Africans are not as fortunate. For them, the consequences of load shedding can be dire. Hennessey (’96) says it prevents access to quality healthcare—a sector she’s served for nearly two decades, mostly in information technology. South Africa is near the top of the list globally for cases of tuberculosis and HIV, as well as sexual and domestic violence. A rolling electrical blackout is one more barrier to receiving care. If a patient makes it to a clinic and the power’s out, their vitals, symptoms, and care plan might need to be recorded manually rather than in the nationwide information system. They may get to the hospital only to find the equipment needed to save their life is down.
“It’s got catastrophic implications in the health sector,” says Hennessey, who spends her days providing technical support to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in her position as senior clinical cascade and strategic information lead at the consulting firm Panagora Group. “[Load shedding] has kicked up a whole host of things for a country that was doing really well, but this is definitely going to impact it negatively.”
Make no mistake, Hennessey loves living in her adopted South Africa, where she’s been for 14 years, and believes deeply in the work she does helping improve the healthcare system. But it’s a vastly different life than she imagined for herself as an undergraduate studying theater at BU, dreaming of one day making it big on the stage or screen.
Big Dreams, Hard Truths
“[It was] a bit naïve or dramatic, but I always said I wanted to become rich and famous so I could use my fame for good,” Hennessey says. Well-trained at one of Minnesota’s top arts academies, Hennessey was accepted into BU’s theater program. The first-generation student set out to perform in the classics, especially Shakespeare, and frequently was cast in the role of the mother or grandmother because she looked older than her age. Her senior year, she and fellow students went on auditions in New York City, but Hennessey didn’t get any parts. “Being plus-sized [and young] at the time, I was never going to get hired in New York to play the mother in The Glass Menagerie,” she recalls.
She moved to Chicago and began taking improvisational comedy classes at The Second City. To make ends meet, she sold programs and T-shirts in the theater. She met current and future Saturday Night Live cast members, like Rachel Dratch and Chris Farley. Her acting teacher was Tina Fey, who suggested that Hennessey’s classical training was getting in the way of her sketch comedy. Hennessey loved rehearsing too much to feel at home in improv. Fey, who would go on to become a Saturday Night Live “Weekend Update” host and an Emmy-winning comic actress, dealt Hennessey’s young acting career its death blow with six words: “You’re not cut out for improv.”
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When Hennessey’s service ended, she returned to the US and began a two-year nursing program at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, with the goal of returning to Africa. A year into her degree, in 2007, Hennessey had an opportunity through Johns Hopkins to study forensic nursing in South Africa for 12 weeks. She worked in a mortuary, reviewing the autopsy files of women who’d been raped and killed.
Despite the grim work she was doing, the country captured Hennessey’s heart. “I realized this is the place I really wanted to be when I finished my nursing degree,” she says. “There is something about the people, environment, and spirit of Africa that makes you come alive, that challenges you in ways you never thought possible while at the same time showing incredible beauty, love, and compassion.”
[It was] a bit naïve or dramatic, but I
always said I wanted to become rich and famous so I could use my fame for good.
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Hennessey, who turns 50 next year, says her job is 100 percent remote; she’d eventually like to get back to working directly with healthcare providers in the clinics. Whenever she’s hamming it up while training nurses and doctors on “something as boring as an information system,” she’s applying her acting training. She also dreams of one day launching a radio program about her adventures as a single expat dating in South Africa. Perhaps she’ll join a community theater production.
“I do have this secret desire in my head to be onstage some day and to use my fame for good,” she says. “[But] I’m happy with what I’m doing, and I have loved every opportunity.”
