Daffy: Interview with Eliot Winkler
Q: Please introduce yourself to our readers and how you are involved with Daffydil.
My name is Eliot Winkler, I'm a 2T4 from MAM. I’m playing Asher, one of the roles in Daffy this year and I played Buddy last year in Daffy, which is how I got involved again this year.
I just love musical theater - it's one of the main things that brings me joy. The fact that I can merge [musical theatre] with medicine, to have the opportunity to do both, has been really nice.
Q: What has been the most memorable part of being in Daffy so far?
My favorite part of Daffy is getting to meet everyone and to be able to put on a show with people who have the same interests and want to create something, especially in the pandemic. Last year was so hard being isolated on Zoom that it felt nice to have a group of people who were like a small family and who all wanted to work together to create a piece we could share with everyone. What's been really memorable already about this year is that we're in-person for rehearsals, which has changed everything. It's so nice to all sing together at the same time. I hear harmonies come through and hear the nuances in people's voices. And then for dance too. It's amazing to see the dance team dance all together, and not on Zoom. Everyone is just so talented.
Q: What does Daffy mean to you?
Last year, doing rehearsals on Zoom was frustrating since we weren't all able to see each other. Despite this, it was still so nice to have a group of people that you would meet with twice a week that were going through the same thing as you and the same experiences. With Daffy, you have the opportunity to show off your creative side, which doesn't necessarily always get used in medicine, and to work together to create a beautiful piece that's larger than us. Why I've done theater for all my life is because it's often a mix of people from so many different walks of life, especially if you do community theater. And then you get to create these bonds and these memories of people that you might not have ever interacted with. In the same way, Daffy pulls us all together from all of the different academies to work together to create these new relationships on stage which then translate into relationships offstage that I've continued; some of my closest friends are from Daffy.
So, I think what Daffy means to me is family.
Q: Where do you see Daffy in the future?
I think that Daffy should continue every year not only for raising money for the Canadian Cancer Society, which is of course so important, but to also give people the opportunity and the creative outlet to express themselves in ways that they might not have thought of before, especially in these often isolating times.
Daffy is such a great experience for us in medicine, especially for those people who might have never done a show before, or might have never wanted to do a show before—it's like this open welcoming space where anyone can feel free to try something new. So I see Daffy continuing in the future for as long as it possibly can. And the more people that can contribute, for writing, advertisements, production team, and so on, the better.
