Eyeworld Daily News

EW SHOW DAILY 36 Dr. Lakra earned awards and acclaim for his play Sequence W hen it comes to balancing ophthal- mology with other in- terests, Arun Lakra, MD, knows a thing or two. The Canadian ophthalmologist has been balancing two careers for almost as long as he has been in the ophthalmology field. In addition to practicing in Calgary, Dr. Lakra is a playwright who has recently received praise and critical acclaim for his play Sequence. Getting into ophthalmology Dr. Lakra attended medical school at the University of Toronto. He then completed his internship at the University of Hawaii. Dr. Lakra went back to Toronto to complete his residency, where he also completed a year of medical retina training. His next step was to return to Calgary and join the refractive sur- gery world. Dr. Lakra said that for a while he exclusively worked in refractive surgery but decided to switch recently and focus on general ophthalmology, which he has been doing for the past few years. Getting into playwriting Dr. Lakra said he has always been interested in writing, and during his later years of medical school, he was feeling a bit imbalanced. "I always had an interest in writ- ing, but when you're going through something like med school or resi- dency, it becomes all left brain all the time," Dr. Lakra said. "I made a conscious effort to try to explore the other side of things." Initially when he started practic- ing ophthalmology, he would work for a while to make some money and then take time off to go and write somewhere. One of these writ- ing breaks included a journey to Los Angeles where he audited a graduate screenwriting course at UCLA. Dr. Lakra said he found this process of working and taking a break to write "challenging but rewarding." Over the years, he had to change his routine as he started a family. "But I've still been trying to carve out some writing time." Currently, Dr. Lakra tends to split ophthalmology and writing time, usually working in his practice three days a week and writing two days a week. He said it is a bit of a juggling act. Sequence The work that Dr. Lakra is getting a lot of attention for recently is Sequence. The play was performed in Canada and has made its way to the United States. The story came out of his desire to write something mean- ingful and create a work that was deeper than anything he had writ- ten before. Dr. Lakra had the idea for Sequence a few years ago. "I had this idea of trying to write a play where it was structured essentially like a double helix of DNA," he said. He pondered this for some time, trying to figure out how exactly he could do this. He wanted the structure to pose questions about order and sequence. "It's structured in a way where there's two threads of the story that are intertwined and by the end, the audience is asked certain questions about what the relationship is be- tween these two stories," Dr. Lakra said. "It is a story that keeps both the brain and the heart engaged." "It's done quite well," he said. "It's won a few awards, it got produced, and it's going to be published." His play premiered in the United States in early October 2013. Although he was not able to attend all rehearsals, Dr. Lakra said he was in constant contact with the director and visited Bloomington, Ind., where the play was performed, to attend the last week of rehearsals and the opening night. Dr. Lakra said that it has been very nice to receive the recognition that he has for Sequence. "I've been working at this writ- ing career of mine for some time now," he said. "But it takes time to learn the craft." It has taken years of hard work to get where he is today, but he feels that he is at a good point in his career. Balancing playwriting and ophthalmology Dr. Lakra said as he has worked in both writing and ophthalmology, he has found the way that the two fit together. "I used to have this misconcep- tion, and I suspect others do too, that writing is strictly a right-brain, creative thing, and medicine and ophthalmology is very scientific and very left brain-oriented," Dr. Lakra said. "But as I've tried to straddle both of these worlds, I've reached the conclusion that there's the science part, the analytical side of writing, which I think is integral in writing anything [along] the lines of what I want to [write]." The two pro- fessions meet in the middle, and Dr. Lakra thinks they each play a part in making the other better. EW Tuesday, April 29, 2014 In other news Canadian ophthalmologist sees success in playwriting by Ellen Stodola EyeWorld Staff Writer Dr. Lakra splits his time between working in ophthalmology and writing. Source: www.lisaenman.ca Actors Karen Johnson-Diamond, Joel Cochrane, Braden Griffiths, and Alana Hawley pose for a poster for Sequence. Source: Kurt Firla

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