Pediatric residents spend much of their training listening to children and families.
For McMaster pediatrics resident Shreya Jha, those conversations don’t end when she leaves the hospital. Sometimes, they continue onstage.
The pediatrician-in-training is also an award-winning composer and playwright whose newest work, Awake and Dreaming, adapts Canadian author Kit Pearson’s novel into an original musical.
Set to premiere at the Hamilton Fringe Festival this month, the production follows Theo, an 11-year-old navigating poverty, family instability and the complicated realities of growing up.
While medicine and musical theatre may seem worlds apart, Jha sees them as two ways of exploring the same question: How do children experience the world?
“I always knew that I wanted this music-science interface in my career,” she says. “I wasn’t sure exactly what that would look like.”
Curiosity and empathy
Jha’s journey began nearly a decade ago at the University of Toronto, where she completed degrees in music and neuroscience simultaneously before pursuing medical school. Her earliest musicals explored scientific themes — from the discovery of DNA to Alzheimer’s disease — but pediatrics eventually offered a new perspective.
Now a McMaster resident and aspiring developmental pediatrician, Jha says caring for children has fundamentally reshaped the way she tells stories.
It has also influenced the way she approaches patients.
“I think being interested in development allows me to see how different aspects of life that may not register as important or meaningful to us as adults really register that way for kids,” she says.
“It allows me to approach kids with a lot more sensitivity and empathy and curiosity.”
That perspective shaped every decision she made while adapting Awake and Dreaming.
Theo experiences significant adversity throughout the story, but Jha resisted writing her simply as a child overcoming hardship. Instead, her training encouraged her to think more deeply about how childhood development and lived experience influence every interaction, every fear and every moment of growth.
“I was very intentional with every line I gave her,” she explains. “What’s Theo learning here? What’s her belief that’s being challenged?”
That same curiosity carries into her work at McMaster Children’s Hospital (MCH).
Rather than viewing children’s behaviour through an adult lens, Jha believes pediatricians have a responsibility to understand what children are trying to communicate.
“What is this child teaching us about themselves?” she asks. “When you understand where a behaviour is coming from, you’re going to more effectively be able to address it.”
It’s an approach that has drawn her toward developmental pediatrics and research that explores the intersection of music, creativity and child health.
Jha is collaborating with researchers at McMaster to examine creative music interventions for school-aged children with autism spectrum disorder, while another study at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital in Toronto explores parental distress among families of children with complex medical and neurodevelopmental needs.
She is also working to expand access to arts-based programming for young patients, building on songwriting initiatives she developed during medical school for youth receiving treatment at MCH.
For Jha, imagination isn’t simply entertainment: It’s part of healthy childhood.
“I think imagination is so important for kids to develop really important life skills, including problem solving and creative thinking,” she says.
She points to growing conversations around children’s screen use and the importance of unstructured play — not as an argument against technology, but as a reminder that children also need opportunities to explore, create and make sense of their world.
“Pretend play and unstructured play are key,” she says. “They also allow kids to teach us some things about how they see the world.”
That philosophy is woven throughout Awake and Dreaming.
A place for medicine and storytelling
Unlike many children’s stories, Theo’s journey doesn’t end with a perfect happily ever after. Instead, she learns to find joy in an imperfect life. It’s a lesson Jha believes resonates just as deeply with adults.
“She doesn’t get everything she’s ever wanted,” Jha says. “It still hurts her and the readers a little bit … but she’s happy.”
That is one of the reasons Jha plans to continue telling stories alongside practising medicine.
“I think it helps me feel that way about my own life,” she says. “It helps me feel that contentment.”
Choosing McMaster for pediatric residency was, in many ways, an extension of that philosophy.
The program’s emphasis on interdisciplinary learning made it feel like a place where both parts of her career would be understood, Jha says.
“What makes me feel most supported is if someone just sort of gets what theatre means to me,” she says. “Musical theatre is not a hobby for me. It’s the other side of my career.”
That support has allowed both careers to grow together.
Far from competing for her attention, medicine and musical theatre continually inform one another. Residency provides new insight into childhood, development and family life. Storytelling offers another way to advocate for children and explore the experiences that shape them.
For Jha, the overlap isn’t accidental. It’s the point.
“I appreciate that while they’re two distinct identities,” she says, “the dual identity is important for telling those kinds of stories.”
Awake and Dreaming runs July 16 to 26 at the Westdale Theatre in Hamilton as part of the Hamilton Fringe Festival.