Theatre legend Daniel Brooks — or a hero almost exactly like him, with his name, face, and background — has recently been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. He’s quick to assure us it’s not the type one brings upon oneself by smoking, but the prognosis is the same.
Staring death in the face, he decides that to “die well,” he needs to attend a ten-day silent meditation retreat. It will allow him to calm the voices in his head and define what is really important.
Of course, for the neurotic Brooks, it doesn’t turn out to be quite that simple. In Other People, now playing at Canadian Stage‘s Berkeley Street Theatre, he unleashes a 100-minute-long torrent of speech to the audience, detailing just what was in his head during his forced silence.
