This is the last play at the Belfry Theatre under the artistic direction of Michael Shamata and it couldn't be more appropriate. When he responded to the question "What made you choose this play?" his answer spoke as much about the man as about the script.
The Belfry Theatre, a renovated 1880s church, is one of Victoria's heritage gems and has been for 48 years with over 360 performances staged in its main auditorium and workshop spaces. University students and high schoolers can enrol in courses delivered there and it regularly sells season tickets to long-time supporters like us.
You can be hard of hearing and tune in to the audio loop system or vision impaired and still attend a show with an audio describer giving a description of on-stage action. There's wheelchair access of course. And cookies - the edible kind. For every mainstage production, there is a B4play, a free one-hour interview session on a Saturday morning when attendees in the studio room watch an interview by a local radio host with cast members and local commentators. And for every show, the director contributes to the program with a brief note to say, "Why I chose this play."
For this his final production at our Belfry, Michael is directing Casey & Diana, by award-winning Canadian actor and playwright Nick Green. Here's the connection.
In 1991 the AIDs epidemic was killing people with a virulence that wouldn't be seen until the COVID pandemic or the toxic drug poisonings of these days. It had been doing its deadly progression, first through populations of gay men, but ultimately into the general population.
In the 1980s Beverly and I were teaching in Saanich and she phoned to tell me we had to do something and we joined a committee to write an education curriculum for our District. It was scrapped because some parents didn't want their children talking about bodily fluids in anal or oral sex, although a year later jurisdictions around the world were putting out programs that taught exactly and explicity that. Diana was the most prominent royal to get involved and her appearance in Toronto changed a public attitude.
Casey House – the "Casey" of the play's title – was a Toronto hospice established for men in their final months of life. Its population of gay men faced death in circumstances of alienation, shunned by many in society and often by their own families with only the compassion of health care workers providing any comfort. Diana visited the facility October 6th, 1991.
This was a period when people were afraid of any contact with infected men, when food trays could be left in hallways and heavily-gowned and masked hospital personnel administered to patients' needs. Not in all cases, of course, but often enough to establish a societal norm where the dying were so terribly stigmatised in a manner that wouldn't be seen until our present fentanyl crisis.
In this environment, Diana hugged and shook (gloveless) hands with patients, talked with them and their family members and in so doing altered forever a public's relationship to victims of a disease. Others in Canada have done it too.
Terry Fox with one leg amputated from cancer, said simply, "Somewhere the hurting must stop" and set out to run across Canada to raise money for cancer research. His death hasn't prevented millions worldwide from still showing up to carry on his work.
Stephen Lewis became United Nations Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. I heard him speak here in Victoria, and to the audience question of how he could carry on the work in the face of such human suffering as he witnessed in Africa, he had a simple response. The work is more important than your feelings; show up.
A young woman speaking about her charity dedicated to ending world hunger responded in much the same way. Facing statistics that showed how impossible was such an undertaking, she promised to always keep her intentions out in front of her feelings, to stay focussed on the outcome and let the emotions drive her actions. Every day she was going to show up.
Nick Green wrote the play that captures Diana's visit and that philosophy. It has been delivered at Stratford and on stages across the country. Now it's being performed here in Victoria. Michael wrote that the central message of the play for him was again that reminder that the first step in confronting a social wrong is the need for us to “show up". We'll definitely show up at the Belfry, along with what are expected to be full houses for the entire run.