Trying and flailing

I'm doing something weird again. I'm working on a play based on my medical mystery, Terminally Ill. Why is this weird for an MD? For those of you who don't know me, this is out of the stratosphere. I'm the playwright spending about five hours a day for five days, working with four actors and a dramaturg to try and bring my show to life. We're each getting paid $500, which follows acting's Equity rates. I thought that was awesome. It's all funded through a grant with Ottawa's TACTICS (Theatre Artists' Co-operative: the Independent Collective Series), which means I don't have to come up with $3,000 to pay everybody for their time. On the other hand, this is financially dumb. I could make $500 in less than three hours at a vaccine clinic, although admittedly they're cutting doctor hours at the clinics—I have none scheduled for June so far, although they do offer three to eight hours less than 24 hours in advance if you're willing to jump for it. Still, I’m spending the week as a theatre artist. This enterprise is a bit see one/do one/teach one, since, with only minimal theatrical experience and training, I'm the lead artist and assembling a team mostly based on Ottawa artists whom I liked and admired at the Fringe festival. I'm a newbie, but I'm the one with the funding, so here we go! I imagine it's a bit like winning a scientific research grant, only this time I'm researching how to stage a production with an escape artist/Elvis impersonator who chains and nails himself into a coffin and lowers himself into the St. Lawrence River. How do you show a coffin on stage, let alone a river? We were hoping to give a performance despite the pandemic, but there are too many variables. One of them is that Elvis will be interpreted by an aerialist whose rig is usually set at 20 feet. There just aren't many theatres that can accommodate that. So we wanted to go outside, but we can't perform in the rain, and June offers no guarantees. Also, sound disappears outdoors, so we'd have to have a proper sound system. And one of the few outdoor spaces in Ottawa told us there would be zero rentals during the pandemic. Thus, we pivoted online. How does any of this translate into Zoom, most especially the aerials? I don't know. Guess we'll find out! One of the things I love about theatre is that, in general, nobody dies. Unless it's onstage, and then they'll get up in time for curtain call. We're free to play and try new things and fail in a way that doctors never can. Another way that theatre's different from traditional medicine is that there's an emphasis on safety and respect for individuals. In my recent playwriting course, we introduced ourselves with our pronouns almost every week for the first six weeks. Of course it didn't bother me to do it, but I found it unusual; would six people's pronouns generally shift in that time? And do we need to introduce ourselves every time? Well, this way you're covered in case your pronouns shift, and it makes sure that everyone gets a chance to say hello. Not such a bad thing after all. We also had to be very careful with our playwriting feedback because everyone should be respected and have their time to talk. The teacher made a point of saying that she was no more advanced than we were when it came to playwriting. There was no one right way to write. Can you imagine a doctor being that respectful of residents or their colleagues? In medicine, you have to spit out 10 differential diagnoses in the first 2.2 seconds, or you will be marked as inferior, and maybe you will be anyway. When I started med school, they told us about studies that first-year medical students were better than clerks at taking histories, because they didn't cut patients off—but after clinical methods in first year, that pretty much got dumped down the toilet. In any case, I'm trying to bring the best of both worlds to the Terminally Ill workshop: a safe place to work combined with some external parameters and local experience and expertise. Dean Gunnarson has offered to take part. He's the world class escape artist whose initial stunt in Winnipeg inspired my book. I also invited Dr. Lalit Chawla. You may know him from The Introverted Doctor podcast, but he's also a magician and a doctor, so I hope he'll enjoy it. We even have a video trailer. It’s Sunday, June 13 at 7 p.m. If you can come, we'd love to see you (pay what you can, proceeds go to TACTICS to fund more artists). Whether you can come or not, keep doing your own thing. Remember to play. Yours in keepin' medicine weird, Melissa

Trying and flailing

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Blog Author

Dr. Melissa Yuan-Innes