‘My mother burst into tears’: Inside ‘Casey and Diana,’ the most moving Canadian play of the year

Playwright Nick Green came to the opening night of his play “Casey and Diana” at the Stratford Festival straight from his day job as a social worker.

Both the fact that he’s double-jobbing and his choice of parallel profession sum up what makes Green “superhuman,” said Andrew Kushnir, the play’s director. “You can tell in Nick’s writing and in his practice as an artist this desire to work the world in a beautiful way, and to activate care.”

The play, based on the true story of Princess Diana’s 1991 visit to Toronto’s pioneering HIV/AIDS hospice Casey House, is an early hit of this year’s Stratford season. In my four-star review, I praised the show for stirring profound emotion in audiences while also being remarkably unsentimental about its subject matter.

“There’s a temptation to romanticize stories like this,” said Green in a Zoom conversation with Kushnir and me. “This was a time of great sadness and loss, and it’s inherently dramatic. But ultimately, for those living through, it was a day after a day after a day.”

The Princess’s visit becomes a focal point for the residents, families and staff in Green’s fictionalized Casey House —something to keep living for. But Diana (played by Krystin Pellerin) isn’t the play’s central character.

“This play is an opportunity to be on a human scale with what the Diana effect may have felt like,” said Kushnir. “To be in the presence of somebody who tried to mobilize their grace and their fame and their aura for the betterment of the world.”

Green and Kushnir are both in their early 40s and were children during the worst of the AIDS crisis. But the disease has nonetheless marked their lives as gay men.

“Growing up, there was a huge amount of misinformation about AIDS and HIV and what it means to be gay,” said Green. “Coming into adulthood, that stigma had done a real number on me. The misinformation and fear impacted a lot of early relationships. It was an omnipresent, irrational worry.”

Green and Kushnir also talked about the effect that the epidemic had on their parents.

“My mother burst into tears after the show,” said Kushnir. “She was very moved by Nick’s story and what we had done with it. But I could see her also processing that cultural anxiety, that fear she had for her son, and the dangers that he would potentially have to navigate as a queer person in this world … and to see her son now, many decades later, just doing fine. I think, for her, it was overwhelming.”

To prepare for the show, Green, Kushnir, and the cast visited Casey House and spoke to people who lived through that time, some of whom had met Princess Diana themselves. These included Anne Allan, former artistic director of the Charlottetown Festival, who was Diana’s dance teacher.

“She passed around a handwritten card from Diana. We actually got to engage with the Princess’s penmanship,” said Kushnir. “These little things created a certain specificity in the practice of the play.”

Green and Kushnir also benefited from the experience of dramaturge Bob White, the Festival’s former director of new play development (since retired), who lived through the AIDS era, and who championed “Casey and Diana” from the beginning. While White’s expertise in developing plays was a big asset, Green said, “It also meant so much to share in his emotional response to a run — to sit with him as he reminisced about what it meant to him to have this show today.”

“Casey and Diana” is deeply moving, but it’s also very funny, which Green and Kushnir said is an expression of the play’s queerness. “Part of the legacy of us queer folk is fighting and surviving with humour,” said Green. This is manifest in the central character of Thomas, a middle-aged gay man (played by Sean Arbuckle), who is a master of the zingy punchline delivered with a self-consciously haughty demeanour.

“Thomas is the closest to me in that show, and a lot of that was an exercise in imagination around what my experience would’ve been in that bed,” said Green. “I wanted to write someone … very realized and proud of who he is, and who partakes in some of the rituals of the community at the time, which is that often one would laugh to keep from crying.”

Green went back to school to train as a social worker 10 years ago. He brought that experience to bear in his writing of the caregivers in the play, including the volunteer Marjorie (Linda Kash) who clumsily asks young Casey House newcomer Andre (Davinder Malhi) if he’s OK. Andre, who has just arrived in the place where he knows he’ll die, reacts poorly.

“Carelessness with language … that happens,” said Green. “That is a part of being in the world of people who are in crisis. Words roll off your tongue that no longer apply … and no amount of experience can prepare you for that.”

Green said that he always encourages people in the arts to explore interests and professions that run alongside their artistic practice. “And not in a fallback profession kind of way,” he added. “You don’t have to do any one thing full-time, all the time. If there are other things that fill your cup, and happen to fill your bank account a bit, I think it’s a beautiful thing.”

“Casey and Diana” is at the Stratford Festival until June 17. Due to demand, the Festival added extra performances on June 9 and 13.

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