{"id":74620,"date":"2022-03-30T13:19:54","date_gmt":"2022-03-30T17:19:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/?p=74620"},"modified":"2022-03-30T13:19:54","modified_gmt":"2022-03-30T17:19:54","slug":"scrutiny-daniel-brooks-people-moving-meditation-end-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2022\/03\/30\/scrutiny-daniel-brooks-people-moving-meditation-end-game\/","title":{"rendered":"SCRUTINY | Daniel Brooks\u2019 \u2018Other People\u2019 Is A Moving Meditation On The End Game"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Daniel
Daniel Brooks (Photo: Bronwen Sharpe)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Canadian Stage\/Other People, written and performed by Daniel Brooks, directed by Brendan Healy, Marilyn and Charles Baillie Theatre, Mar. 20 to Apr. 3. Tickets here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Actor, playwright, director Daniel Brooks is one of Canada\u2019s great men of theatre, with a reputation that stretches way beyond our borders. Brooks, 63, is also dying, having been diagnosed with terminal stage four lung cancer (and not from smoking, he assures us).<\/p>\n

His new solo show Other People<\/em> is defiant, courageous, gutsy \u2014 use any word you want \u2014 in facing death head on, but most of all, it is filled with wry wit and self-deprecating humour. As an audience member, I felt privileged to be there \u2014 to be admitted into Brooks\u2019 intimate circle, as it were.<\/p>\n

The structure of the play is built around Brooks\u2019 ten-day stay at a retreat in Montebello, Quebec that practices the Noble Silence through meditation; in other words, no talking or communication of any kind. Brooks has gone to this retreat because he wants to \u201cdie well\u201d \u2014 his words, not mine. He wants to shuffle off this mortal coil in peace, particularly for his two daughters, and he thinks that mediation will be the route.<\/p>\n

The other people of the title are his fellow retreaters. Because he can\u2019t talk to them, he assigns them names, like Red Crocs and Fast Walker, and much of the play is consumed with his obsession with them.<\/p>\n

Brooks is waiting for the \u201ctingle\u201d that means you have embraced meditation wholly, but it is a long time in coming. As a result, because he can\u2019t dive deep into mediation, his mind is very active, and Other People<\/em> is filled with the various places to which his thoughts wander, and the resulting insights he feels free to reveal.<\/p>\n

Brooks\u2019 dramaturge is Daniel MacIvor, another great Canadian man of theatre, and a well-known collaborator of his. No wonder the script for Other People is so creative with these two brilliant minds working on the words.<\/p>\n

There are some great lines like, the perks of having terminal cancer means his daughters answer his phone calls, and friends pick up the dinner tabs. Because \u201cdeath is busy\u201d, Brooks recites, with some degree of irony, a droll list of all the phrases that represent dying such as kick the bucket, et cetera. Brooks hates the words \u201cbucket list\u201d so much that he just wants to \u201cpuke in the bucket\u201d.<\/p>\n

Director Brendan Healy may have gone overboard at portraying Brooks\u2019 nervous energy, but movement coach Adam Lazarus was at hand to bring realism to the runaway dancing and prancing. Brooks brings great humour to this physical aspect of the play, so we do sense that it helps lighten the mood.<\/p>\n

Kimberly Purtell\u2019s set is a simple raised platform with one chair, and a screen behind for occasional projections, like a picture of Brooks\u2019 lungs. The raison d\u2019\u00eatre for the chair is that meditators who find it difficult to sit cross-legged on the floor can use a chair.<\/p>\n

Purtell\u2019s lighting for Brooks is a warm glow, but there are several occasions when the audience lights go on, when Brooks snaps back to reality. It all seems to be a very suitable setting for a man talking about the end game, along with Thomas Ryder Payne\u2019s ambient sound design of background noises.<\/p>\n

What Brooks does take away from the retreat is the guru\u2019s admonition to find \u201cequanimity\u201d so he can live well now. The last we see of him is standing perfectly still as the lights fade.<\/p>\n

Other People<\/em> is an exceptional theatre experience that you\u2019ll never forget.<\/p>\n

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Daniel Brooks’ new solo show ‘Other People’ is defiant, courageous, gutsy \u2014 use any word you want \u2014 in facing death head on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":74621,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[39907,52,62,63],"tags":[631,29681,4230],"yst_prominent_words":[34106,29669,7140,8400,18832,10652,29667,14378,6985,8798,11181,37158,25474,8973,14794],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/03\/Daniel-Brooks-Review.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-jpy","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74620"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74620"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74622,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74620\/revisions\/74622"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74620"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=74620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}