Recently, I spoke with Dr. Julie Théberge, a researcher in artistic methodologies and collaborative practices at HUPR, a research centre at the National Circus School focused on human potential and movement in the performing arts. Dr. Julie currently lives in Québec City but hails from Ryoun-Norand, Québec, right on the border of Ontario. She jokes that growing up in a border town made it possible for her work to live on the border of many different areas – her doctoral work, for example, lives at the intersection of art and medicine.
In her doctoral studies she supported the creation and presentation of Urgence Rurales 360, a first-of-its-kind circus show that toured Québec and set out to humanize healthcare between patients and doctors. The show sought feedback and discussion from the audience and created a unique, never-before-seen avenue for thoughtful and imaginative thinking about the future of medical care.
I began our conversation by asking Julie how she would introduce herself.
Hi Julie, as we start can you tell us a bit about yourself and your work?
Yes, of course. My background is manifold. In the 90’s I finished a degree in psychology from McGill University. I was young, I was 20, 25, and didn’t know what to do with that, and wandered around and worked at restaurants. I wanted to go into music and didn’t do that, and then moved to Charlevoix, which is far from Montreal and started working in a women’s community centre. There, I started giving creativity workshops, drawings, sewing, etc, and I found something there that was very meaningful for me and that made sense.
I’m not that precise in my drawing, but I’ve always drawn. And so, I started taking art classes, because I’d never taken art classes before. I was maybe in my 30s, and decided that I kind of came out of the closet, because growing up, back home doing arts was something that you would do after you finished your day job, and you could paint, but you don’t do it as a real job, because you’re gonna end up in drugs. But, you know, being 30, I figured that [ by now] I wasn’t into drugs, so I think I’m good. And I was already poor. So, you know, might as well, there was no real danger there. So then I started art school, did a certificate, and then after that, a bachelor’s, and really found that amazing. It was amazing not just to create, but it was a place where the way I was thinking, the way I was taking in the world and making sense of it, and wanting to make an impact on that… it made me feel like I wasn’t that crazy.
I wasn’t that talented artistically, but I did manage. But I think it was mostly the space. The working space, and being with people, the way people were, and the way we approached the world, and saw [it].
And at the same time, I started doing my bachelor’s in visual arts, I moved to Quebec City, and started working at the community centre there, for a project called Cirque du Monde. It was a social program that was, at the time, coordinated by Cirque du Soleil. We were ‘using’ circus as a motor for social and personal change. The model was this meeting of expertise, where we had social workers, street workers, working with artists to make these workshops. So it wasn’t just recreational, come and do circus, but we had social goals and social aims underlying all these circus activities.
So, doing pyramids, we would learn all the techniques of pyramids, but also learn about communication, consent, and making sure everybody had their place, stronger people on the bottom and lighter people so that everybody had space. Or juggling, for example.
So there were a lot of life lessons we could learn from circus lessons.
I did that for a long time, about 14 years. I did that throughout my bachelor’s, then I had two children, then I did my master’s in visual arts. My practice is mostly around collage, artists’ books, fanzines, and DIY. It is mostly DIY. I also have a post-punk band where I am the singer.
Then I met [Dr] Richard Fleet. He had done research on rural healthcare access in Quebec and had highlighted inequities in access to services and quality of care.
He had been doing research for years, publishing and presenting at conferences, but nothing really changed. So he became interested in how to make things more creative and more purposeful.
That is how we started working together. I was working at a community centre, and I received a phone call from a doctor who had heard about our program and wanted to come observe the youth. That evening we joked about a doctor coming to observe the underprivileged youth and told them to behave, which reflected some of our own prejudices at the time.
But he came in very open, curious, and engaged, and connected well with the youth. We started collaborating when he was acting as scientific director for conferences and giving keynote talks.
At that time, he wanted to bring more creativity into medicine, which is very protocol-driven, with conferences that are mostly PowerPoint presentations delivered by very knowledgeable but often overwhelmed people.
Circus became a way to introduce creativity into research and medicine. So during his conferences, the youth would create a show that we presented as a keynote or closing event. It had a strong impact and was well-received.
It was also empowering for the youth. They were performing in front of 300 to 1,000 doctors. These were young people with vulnerabilities, often facing prejudice themselves, yet they were given a platform and asked what they wanted to say to this audience.
What I found powerful was that after the performances, doctors and university researchers would come speak with the youth. There was this image of young people with piercings and spikes speaking to doctors on an equal level, outside of the clinical context. That, to me, was very strong.
That is how I started working with Richard Fleet. After 14 years at the community centre, I felt I needed a new challenge and completed my master’s. I then joined his research chair.
At one point he said he was under pressure from the university because he did not have enough master’s and PhD students to supervise. We were already developing a project about turning his rural health research into a circus show, so I suggested doing a PhD within that project and formalizing it as part of my doctoral work.
That became the project of translating his research into a circus production with Cirque Éloize and The 7 Fingers. We worked with Patrick Leonard, reviewed the research reports, and collaborated with artists to develop a show about rural healthcare.
We have now completed a tour of 15 performances across Quebec, in rural areas and some urban centres. Each performance is followed by a Q&A and discussion about local community issues and possible solutions.
This is the research project, which is funded, and we will be conducting follow-up interviews at six months and one year after people have seen the show to understand what stays with them and what kinds of actions are implemented in their communities.
So let’s place this then within the context of the research project and the performances that you were doing across Quebec. I’m curious if there are themes, tensions, or concepts that came between the audience and the performance itself, or some of the questions that were asked between maybe you and the research team and the audience that you didn’t anticipate?
Well, there’s a lot. But all the time, what’s really amazing is how that show brings people together from different backgrounds. In the audience in LaSalle, you would have people working in the hospital. You would have doctors, paramedics, mayors, other artists, or people who are just living there, people that we could maybe call citizens, although all the other ones are also citizens, but people living with diseases or just living in the community.
And that, to me, is beautiful, because a lot of the time people from the community do their thing in their lives, they go to the hospital, they see it through their lens, and then they go back and that’s it. Same with the mayors, same with everyone.
And so, that moment where all these people are together in the same room, after watching a circus show that brings things to a certain level. Sometimes with our shows, the health professionals don’t learn a lot of things in the sense that they go, that’s my reality. But what they appreciate is they say, ‘you’ve given me a voice, you’ve given us a voice. Because we’re busy saving lives, and advocating for ourselves is not something we do.’ They care about people, but they don’t advocate for themselves. That’s appreciated by them.
And then, for people from the community, they go, oh, I had no idea that when they’re doing transfers or all these things, that it could be so stressful.
So I think it brings a lot of empathy for the healthcare system and for the people living in it, which means everybody.
I’m curious if there is a question that your work, or you in particular, are trying to answer through your research. Is there a question about the nature of community engagement, social work, or even psychosocial or physical work that you find particularly compelling and think about frequently?
Through my PhD, I think that my case study was partly trying to answer that… But it’s not about social engagement, though maybe it is, or maybe there could be in some sub-questions.
What I wanted to investigate is, is a piece of art a piece of knowledge? And all these questions of what knowledge is and what it isn’t, and that hierarchy of science and facts. I’m very interested in all these other types of knowledge that are not as recognized as such.
I don’t know if it matters to a lot of people, but it’s something that I like to investigate.
And lastly, why is artistic intelligence relevant or significant to you?
When I came across artistic intelligence, I was at the beginning of my PhD. It was 2019… But for me, at that moment, I wasn’t sure what I was talking about. I was like, okay, merging of arts and science, but what is it? Is it really an artsy thing?
But the thing about this mindset of artistic intelligence, which by the way artists don’t necessarily have, and scientists can have, it made sense to me. It shifted things for me. It really helped me frame my PhD, going, okay, I’m not talking about art. I’m talking about that space where there’s connection.
And I think there are a lot of definitions, but for me, artistic intelligence is about connecting things outside of rules. It’s like, these make sense, let’s try to connect them and see what happens. And if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, nobody dies.
It’s the connection and the openness, and also enjoying thinking. It’s not running through the motions of something and then not bothering to think. It’s more like, no, let me bother.
Learn more about Dr. Julie Théberge and her work on her website.
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