Playwright shares her relationship Guilt
Flacks lets it all out in solo show for One Yellow Rabbit
Breaking up is hard to do.
For award-winning Canadian author, journalist, actor and playwright Diane Flacks, this sentiment is not just some catchy refrain from an old Neil Sedaka pop tune. It became her mantra when her 20-year relationship ended.
“I went through a period of grief and guilt for about a year because it was my doing. I caused the chaos, and we had two kids. I have never ended a relationship, even with friends. I always hang on — but this time I didn't,” Flacks says.
Her solution to the mix of outrage and fascination she experienced was to do what she has done five times in the past. She wrote a play. In this case, it's a new solo work called Guilt that she will premiere in Calgary for One Yellow Rabbit from Oct. 5 to Oct. 8.
“People don't change as radically as I did in that relationship unless they hit a wall of razor blades or a river of chocolate. I don't talk about the razor blades in Guilt because it would be unfair to my former partner who hasn't been able to weigh in.
“I concentrate instead on what I did wrong. There's definitely enough humour in that. People navigate through the most difficult and traumatic life situations with gallows humour and that's how I got through the breakup.”
Flacks admits she sought therapy but says it was “time, meditation and writing that were the real healers. To deal with all the really intense things that have happened by my writing about them helped me get out of myself and connect with other people. You can't be isolated if you hope to heal.”
Flacks says when she did start talking with friends, she learned they, too, had experienced either being left or having left someone or that their long-term relationships were changing and that made her realize she could tell her story but make it universal.
“It's almost impossible to find someone who hasn't been through a breakup so people will be able to see themselves in Guilt. It's not just about me. We're all in this relationship chaos together which means we can all laugh together.”
Guilt was supposed to be part of this year's High Performance Rodeo but it was cancelled then restructured. One Yellow Rabbit asked Flacks to bring Guilt to Calgary in February for the 2023 High Performance Rodeo but she is already booked. She will be on a four-city tour for the National Arts Centre's stage adaptation of Ann-marie Macdonald's novel Fall On Your Knees, co-directed by Alisa Palmer, who also directed Guilt.
“I really wanted to première Guilt in Calgary so I asked One Yellow Rabbit if they would schedule me between Rodeos.”
She describes Guilt as “a solo show about a self-sacrificing Jewish mother going through a mid-life crisis, who blows up her own marriage,” and says she'll be playing several characters including herself, her grandmother, Sigmund Freud, and a raccoon.
Flacks has been honing her craft as a performer and writer since she was 21.
“I graduated from theatre school only to discover the roles I was being offered as a young woman were so terrible and one-note that I helped create a feminist theatre company called Empress Productions so we could create our own cabaret shows. We took them to the Edmonton Fringe and had a really fun time, which is what performance should be about.”
Flacks has been an Emmy-nominated writer on such TV shows as the original Kids in the Hall and The Baroness von Sketch Show as well as such sitcoms as Workin' Moms, Young Drunk Punk and Working the Engels.