About the Play:

Waiting Room is a full-length drama by Diane Flacks. What are you willing to risk to save a life? A doctor embarks on a ground-breaking medical experiment despite the objections of his colleagues. Meanwhile, a couple are torn about whether the doctor has what it takes to save their baby. Waiting Room is a play about life in the waiting room of a major children's hospital.

Waiting Room examines medical diagnosis, prognosis, and uncertainty. Chrissie and Jeremy have spent a great deal of time in shock, waiting – for news of their baby daughter’s post-operation recovery, for weekly scans to show that her tumour is gone, for robotic forty-five-second updates from Dr. Andre Malloy, their brilliant but arrogant neuro-oncologist. The hospital waiting room has become a second home where they struggle separately as parents and as a couple, where they laugh inappropriately, lose tempers, and find resilience as they confront a roller coaster of hope and despair and a crisis of decision-making. And just beyond the waiting room, Dr. Malloy faces his own dark and risky medical dilemma. With sharp insight, Waiting Room examines medical ethics, compassion, gallows humour, and humanity in life-threatening situations.

Waiting Room premiered in 2015 at Tarragon Theatre in Toronto.

Cast: 4 women, 2 men

What people say:

"I was entirely absorbed … I cannot imagine that anyone would be unmoved by the scenarios and relationships depicted in Waiting Room." — Mooney on Theatre

"The questions that Flacks raises, about the doctor/patient relationship, the physician as a godlike figure and the decision to experiment for the good of science rather than that of the patient, are carefully posed and left for us to ponder." — NOW Magazine

About the Playwright:

Diane Flacks is an Emmy, Gemini and Dora nominated Canadian comedic actress, journalist, screenwriter, and playwright. She is known for her four smash hit solo shows and her featured columns in the Toronto Star and Globe and Mail, as well as in her regular national CBC radio column on parenting.