FALLING: A WAKE by Gary Kirkham
Falling: A Wake is available for touring. Contact Kathleen Sheehy at ksheehy@lostandfoundtheatre.ca or 519-896-2253
About the play:
Harry and Elsie have been together for 25 years in a marriage that has withstood more than the usual ravages of time. One night a jet explodes far above their isolated farm. The body of a young man, still strapped in his airline seat, falls out of the sky into their yard. As the night unfolds, their mysterious guest effects a profound transformation in his hosts. A haunting and surprisingly funny play about love, loss, and the redemptive power of letting go.
Inspired by the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, Falling: A Wake, a haunting and surprisingly funny play, received critical and popular acclaim at its world premiere in Kitchener in 2007, at its US premiere in Hudson, New York in 2008, and at the Magic Circle Theatre in Carmel, California in 2009, and has been optioned for Off-Broadway.
“What we experience does not leave us when we leave the theater. Here is where theater is at its best; when a theatrical production does more than entertain, when it proffers to us a reflection of ourselves”. - Columbia County Scoop
“Its 80 minutes of plot twists and turns, its humor, its questioning of God, faith, and despair, and its redemptive ending, which is not only plausible but sincere—and all the more powerful for it—make Falling: A Wake a rare play, which earns its standing ovation, not out of habit, but out of merit”. - Metroland
"Falling: A Wake is a prayer for the departed, as well as a prayer to those who remain. It quietly, but insistently, searches out meaning in a world that often appears random, reminding us that, at some level, we are all lost souls in the dead of night waiting on the light." - The Record
Developed by Lost&Found Theatre with the assistance of the Waterloo Region Arts Fund
Premiere Performance: March 2007 at the Registry Theatre, Kitchener, Ontario with the assistance of the Ontario Arts Council
Direction: Gary Kirkham and Nicole Lee Quesnel
Dramaturgy: Henry Bakker
Harold: Alan K. Sapp
Elsie: Kathleen Sheehy
The Boy: Doran Damon Okkema
United States Premiere: September 2008 by Stageworks on the Hudson, Hudson, New York
2010 production:
Direction: Darlene Spencer
Harold: Mark Whelan
Elsie: Kathleen Sheehy
The Boy: Billy Chandler
Gary Kirkham wrote the award-winning Queen Milli of Galt which opened the King Street Theatre (now the Conrad Centre) in 2001. Gary is also an actor, teacher, filmmaker, and all-around arts collaborator. He has been playwright in residence at the Blyth Festival and artist in residence for the City of Cambridge. Gary has worked with The MT Space on play development, most notably the recent production of The Last 15 Seconds.
Gary’s next play, Pearl Gidley, premieres July 2010 at the Blyth Festival, Ontario.
Mark Whelan, Kathleen Sheehy and Billy Chandler in the 2010 production
Photos by Tom Vogel
Video clip of a rehearsal scene plus interviews with director and playwright
