KENORA — The worlds of medicine and theatre have more in common than one might think.
That’s according to Dr. Lisa Habermehl, who has worked as a rural family physician in the Kenora and Red Lake areas. She’s also an assistant professor at NOSM University.
Outside of the medical world, however, Habermehl is the co-founder of the So I Guess We’re Doing This? Theatre Company in Kenora and the playwright and an actor in its debut production, Finding Richard Close.
And it was quite an auspicious debut, as it recently premiered at this year’s Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival in July.
“I was nervous, certainly,” Habermehl said in an interview with Newswatch. “But, also, I knew that the cast had done a beautiful job.”
“I wasn’t worried it was not going to look good on stage,” she continued. “I was a bit nervous about (how) it would be received.”
Habermehl said the production, which explores complicated family relationships as two estranged siblings are reunited to manage the affairs of their dying mother, underwent some changes over time while it was being created.
It started out more as a comedy, she explained, but became more “heartfelt” and nuanced.
“The initial plan was that I was going to write a comedy, but … it is a little difficult to write a comedy when you know one of the characters, that we really don’t meet during the duration of the present time, is busy dying in the back room,” Habermehl said.
“We received some really lovely reviews and so it affirmed that perhaps this is part of my life path that maybe I should do this again.”
Habermehl is no stranger to the stage, having performed with another local Kenora group called TryLight Theatre Co. She said part of the reason she wanted to form her own group was to explore other opportunities that may be outside the scope of a more traditional company.
The fledgling theatre company’s production manager, Courtney Stolz, also has a background on stage, having performed as a child and a teenager, but, like Habermehl, stepped into a new role as a behind-the-scenes leader.
“It’s been really good for me, I think, to learn things like how do you market a show, how do you come in with the outside perspective,” she said.
“The Winnipeg Fringe was amazing, (I) learned so much, got to see how you actually put on a show in a professional theatre, which was new to all of us, I think, and I think it was a really great way to see what we need to do moving forward if we want to keep this thing going.”
And the show does look to keep going, as the troupe is scheduled to perform Finding Richard Close in Kenora from Aug. 21 to 23.
“We’ve had a lot of discussions about what we want to do following Kenora because I think everybody involved feels really passionate about the show,” Stolz said.
“We all think it’s a great production and we’ve loved working together, so there has been discussion about future performances in other communities or perhaps other fringe festivals, but we don’t have anything concrete on the books at the moment.”
Habermehl said being involved in theatre, including acting in her own work, has helped her see some parallels between the medical and arts worlds and how one can complement the other.
“If you actually start looking at the literature and research of art and medicine and healing, it’s actually quite apparent that if people engage in the arts — healthcare providers of all sorts — that they do better, they feel better, they build better teams,” she said.
“Things like improvisation, which on the stage looks different to some extent than it might in communicating with patients, but the art is still the same,” Habermehl continued, adding that both require skills like communicating, exchanging stories and active listening.
The arts, she said, “all float our boats and make us human beings, because that’s what we need to be first and that will make us better caregivers and healers.”
