Monday-Saturday at 7:30 p.m., Friday & Saturday matinees at 2:30 p.m.
Starring Robert Bockstael
Written and directed by Arthur Milner
Design by Martin Conboy
Runtime: Approximately 80 minutes.
A hard-hitting, sentimental and funny play about dying — based on a mostly true story.
A talkback with special guests will follow most performances, talkback schedule listed below!
All tickets: $25 + $3 facility fee = $28
“The weighty material flows through Robert Bockstael’s seemingly effortless delivery weaving a believable humor with poignant remembrances and effective arguments.”
— Jennifer Cavanagh, Apartment 613
“Bockstael controlled the mood of the audience throughout the performance with aplomb, drawing us through humour into the serious emotional business of death and back out the other side.”
— Wes Babcock, New Ottawa Critics
“The provocative one-man show … targets our sense of right and wrong. Milner, through the accessible voice of Bockstael, wraps his questions in warm anecdotes about his family, sprinkles the show with humour, and lovingly depicts his vital, opinionated mother.”
— Patrick Langston, Ottawa Citizen
“Robert Bockstael is a wonderful performer and a fantastic storyteller. It’s very intimate. It was polished, it was funny … but absolutely important to discuss, and he did a fantastic job bringing it to light. And it became a story about family, it became just about his relationship to his mother and the people around him — and a lot of light and a joy of life.”
— Jessica Ruano, Just Another Gala, Your Ottawa Theatre Podcast
Robert Bockstael is known to millions as the sociopathic Corporal Brian Fletcher from his years on CBC’s North of 60. He is also much loved for his portrayals of Jim Flett on Sullivan’s Wind at My Back and Mr. Dupree on Disney’s Famous Jett Jackson. During his 35 years in the industry, Robert has worked as an actor in theatres across Canada. He is also a director, and was Associate to the Artistic Director of GCTC in Ottawa and a founding member of the New Theatre of Ottawa. He has been a leading actor in 7 television series and dozens of films, and has provided voices for numerous animated series. Mr. Bockstael makes his home in Ottawa and is an Artistic Associate at The Acting Company. He is currently at work on his first novel.
Playwright, theatre director and journalist. Arthur Milner enjoys a long association with Ottawa’s Great Canadian Theatre Company (GCTC), where he was resident playwright and artistic director. His published plays include Masada, Zero Hour, Learning to Live with Personal Growth, Crusader of the World and It’s Not a Country, It’s Winter. His play, Facts, opened at GCTC in 2010, toured the West Bank and Israel (in Arabic), ran in London, U.K., for a month, and was produced by the acclaimed Semaver Kumpanya in Istanbul (in Turkish). In May 2014 at GCTC, he directed the world premiere of George F. Walker’s The Burden of Self-Awareness. He is a featured columnist with Inroads, the Canadian Journal of Opinion. He shares his time between the National Capital Region, and Toronto.
Martin Conboy’s design credits include Sister Judy (Arts Club, Vancouver), Moss Park (Green Thumb, Vancouver), The Burden of Self Awareness (GCTC, Ottawa), Facts (at GCTC and then nine cities in Palestine and Israel), Big Mama (NAC, Ottawa, and Belfry, Victoria), Orfeo (Lithuanian State Opera), Happy Days (Neptune Theatre), and Cranked (New York City). As a theatre/lighting consultant he has designed theatres for GCTC, the Canadian Aviation Museum, Algonquin College, and Ottawa’s Arts Court redevelopment. Recent architectural lighting includes Roy Thomson and Massey Halls in Toronto and the Canadian Embassy in Paris. With RH Thomson, he co-created “Vigil 1914-1918,” seen across Canada and in England and Belgium. He lives in Ottawa, where his company MCLD (www.mcld.ca) is based.
Talkback Schedule
Rev. Ellie Barrington, Imam Mohamad Jebara
Wednesday, January 10
Friday, January 12
matinee
Sarah Dickson, Manager of Care, Hospice Care Ottawa
Carol Seaby, Executive Director, At-Home Hospice
matinee
Daphne Gilbert, Professor of Law, University of Ottawa
evening
Rabbi Elizabeth Bolton, Or Haneshamah (ORH): Ottawa’s Reconstructionist Community
