In this study two worlds are being engaged – healthcare and the theatrical arts – to investigate how partner-creating processes are established in encounters between patients and professionals in healthcare settings aiming for a more person-centred care. Controlled studies have shown that person-centred care can contribute to measurable changes and positive effects. Such a profound change of approach has, however, proven itself to be ‘easier said than done’, and there is a need for methods and approaches that can contribute to how a partnership between healthcare professionals and patients can be established and maintained. In the study two methodological concepts are brought in from the theatre through the Stanislavskian concepts of the Magic If and Given Circumstances which actors and directors use during rehearsals to analyse a playscript. To examine the asymmetry in human interaction in healthcare contexts and what means can be effective in creating partnerships in such situations, three care encounters are selected and transformed into theatre manuscripts. These scripts are explored with the help of actors who have taken the roles of healthcare professionals and patients in staged readings, and finally these actors are also interviewed alternately in the first and third person. Theatre expertise is employed to develop a research methodology for examining human interaction in the healthcare setting. Inspired by the philosophical anthropology and critical hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur an interpretative model is developed in the study, meaning the work of interpreting a role in a theatrical context, is ”read” through the theoretical lens of Ricoeur’s theory of interpretation. Using Bengt Kristensson Uggla’s concept laboratory of interpretation, the theatre’s rehearsal process and the healthcare encounter dialogues are regarded as interpretation labs, illuminating how the patient-role is being co-created and re-interpreted (thus both discovered and invented) in the collaboration between patients and healthcare professionals during the healthcare encounter.