A chance meeting at the dog park saved Australian theatre-maker and puppeteer Lana Schwarcz's life. She tells Rebecca Fox how much she is looking forward to coming to the Dunedin Fringe Festival.
Lana Schwarcz relives her cancer diagnosis each night on stage.
"It's a bit like groundhog day.''
She is able to do so because the story has a happy ending, thanks to an emotional breast cancer survivor who urged her and every woman in a dog park one morning to have a mammogram.
"It seemed to be her mission ... I thought I'm only 40 are you crazy? This is too much information about your breasts.''
So Schwarcz carried on with life, filling her days with things to do in an effort to stave off the depression that was dogging her, until she ran out of things to do.
"I remembered what that woman said and thought, ‘Oh well, I'll go get a mammogram'. That is something to do.''
The test discovered a lump in her breast, one she would not have discovered herself until it was too late.
"The doctor said I was one lucky lady.''
As she had caught it early enough, she was able to keep her breast.
"That would not have happened if I had waited any longer.''
Part of getting through such a traumatic experience for the puppeteer, stand-up comic and actor was to write and laugh about it, although she never wanted to make a show as that was too "cliched'', she said.
She thought there were too many cancer shows around, possibly because more people were surviving and it was becoming more acceptable to talk about cancer.
"It started with a blog to let people know; I wanted control over the information. In the performance community they like to gossip and I could see it ending up with me dying.''
At first pass Schwarcz thought the blog was a little dry and clinical so she threw in some jokes.
"That's what you do as an entertainer''.
"You know, it's that artists' concern about the audience and the need to make it entertaining.''
However, she began to realise that through her art she processed things.
"It was a natural progression, although I did fight it a little bit. Whenever anyone suggested it, I would be like ‘no, no no'.''
She had traditionally chosen difficult topics to write about and perform.
Her first solo show was about older people living in a retirement home.
"I seem to approach difficult subjects in ways people enjoy, although selling the topic can be difficult. That play won awards and critical acclaim.''
Only a year out of treatment, which included radiation therapy, and not yet in the clear, she found reliving the diagnosis each night of her show, Lovely Lady Lump, difficult emotionally.
She thinks it was because her story had a happy ending that it was easier to laugh and joke about some of the most traumatic parts of the experience on stage, such as her biopsy.
"Every time I go through it there is another scene where I fix it up in some way. It's a little bit of therapy.''
Some have been critical of her approach, believing that laughing at cancer is not appropriate.
"My response was, ‘it happened to me'. I needed to joke about it. If I didn't joke, didn't laugh, I would be back in that sea of depression.''
At the recent Perth Fringe Festival the response varied, although Schwarcz was nominated for the festival theatre award.
"I was a little upset people judged me for that. It is my response to it and you can choose to laugh at it with me, learn something educational and be entertained along the way.''
About one in three people get cancer and one in eight women get breast cancer, so it is a universal topic that directly affects many, many people.
"I'm really vulnerable up there. I do bare my breast.''
It was important people realised it was cancer she was taking the "piss out of'' not its victims.
That "sticking the boot into the cancer'' was important, Schwarcz said.
"The people who enjoy the show the most are survivors. They laugh the hardest.''
She did wonder if that sort of judgement would happen to a male comic, as men seemed to have a licence to joke about anything.
The trials and travails were worth it though, as the audience got so much out of the show, she said.
The show's messages were not just for those who had cancer but friends and family as well.
"They'll say now they suddenly understand.''
Schwarcz is also taking the show to this month's Wellington Fringe Festival and to Hamilton's Garden Art Festival.
The show
• Lana Schwarcz performs her show Lovely Lady Lump as part of the Dunedin Fringe Festival, at Fortune Theatre, March 6-8.
• The Fringe starts on March 3. Bookings are now open.
