Getting to room temperature
by Arthur Milner
FEBRUARY 5-7, 2022 | RPL FILM THEATRE
GETTING TO ROOM TEMPERATURE is a hard-hitting, sentimental and funny one-person play about dying. Based on a mostly true story by playwright Arthur Milner and — for the first time — performed by Arthur Milner.
“My spry mother was ninety-three and a half when she took a turn for the worse. I accompanied her to the doctor. He closed a file on his desk, turned to her and said, ‘Well, Rose, what can I do for you?’ My mother said, ‘Doctor, I would like to die. Can you help me?’ The doctor said, ‘No. And don’t ask me again.’ And I thought: I can write a play about this.”
~This piece explores themes of death and dying, and discusses Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) ~
Team
Arthur Milner - Playwright, Performer
Johanna Bundon - Creative Producer
Rachel Butt - Stage Manager
Ruaridh MacDonald - Teleprompter Support
Ian Campbell - Technical Support
Jayden Pfeifer - Production Support
Cal Pfeifer - Carpentry
Curtain Razors presents Getting to Room Temperature, in partnership with RPL Film Theatre and New Dance Horizons (NDH) Love + Loss Series. These activities are curated by Curtain Razors Artistic Associate, Johanna Bundon.
New Dance Horizons (NDH) LOVE + LOSS Series opens a window on liminal spaces exploring ideas, stories and resonances of love & loss, through live performance featuring dance, visual art, theatre, performance art, sound artists from across the country.
Arthur Milner is a playwright, theatre director and journalist. Published plays include Learning to Live with Personal Growth, 1997, Zero Hour, Crusader of the World, It’s Not a Country, It’s Winter, and Masada and Facts. He is a past resident playwright and artistic director of the Great Canadian Theatre Company in Ottawa. A GCTC collective creation Sandinista! was performed in Regina as part of a Canadian tour in 1983. He has taught at universities across the country, including the University of Regina, and he is a featured columnist at inroadsjournal.ca.
a note from the playwright
This is a very unusual piece of theatre. If you come to a performance, you’ll notice that the back wall (behind the audience) is lined with television monitors. Here’s why.
I wrote Getting to Room Temperature, in 2014-2015, with a lot of help from Maureen Labonté, my “dramaturge.” It was always her preference that I perform this play, and I played along for a time. But I chickened out; it had been a long time since I’d darkened a stage and I’d always found memorizing lines terrifying. We found an excellent actor, Robert Bockstael. My friends said that he was a better me than me.
For two years, on and off, Robert and I toured through Ontario, British Columbia and Nova Scotia. Robert kept the lines alive so he could perform with little notice. Then, with fewer performances to be done, he let the lines slide.
Several months later, we got a call to do one performance in North Ontario, but it was no longer financially practical. But it did get me thinking. What about using a teleprompter — the kind of equipment that politicians and TV newsreaders use? It would kill two big birds with one stone. First, I could do the performance myself because I wouldn’t have to memorize lines. Second, a performer could do a single performance, which would make it a lot easier to bring a show to small and distant places.
Skip ahead a couple of years. Jennifer Brewin, my wife, is hired as Globe Theatre’s Artistic Director. We move to Regina where we meet some of the Curtain Razors people. I give a copy of Room Temperature to Johanna Bundon. She shares it with the Curtain Razors team. And here we are.
This is incredibly exciting because I get to be myself but also because it’s an experiment. Maybe an important one. And you’re part of it.
Thank you to Johanna Bundon and Jayden Pfeifer and Curtain Razors, and also to Rachel Butt and Ruaridh MacDonald; and, also, the gang that premiered Room Temperature at the 2016 Undercurrents Festival in Ottawa: Maureen, Robert, Martin Conboy, Jenny Salisbury, Sue Fijakowska. There was also a French production — Souffler la Veilleuse — and thank you Jean Marc Dalpé and Paul Rainville and Théâtre de la Vielle 17 for that.
- Arthur Milner
audience responses | Getting to room temperature
“This is to tell you how much I enjoyed your wonderful new play last night. Undoubtedly it was by far the best piece of theatre I have seen in a very, very long time. I found it deep, challenging, thought provoking, humorous and really well written. I felt the material was so very good that I could have performed it successfully myself. You tackled a very difficult subject and handled it superbly.”
“I believe experiencing your play contributed to me being the calm loving daughter my dad needed in the last months of his life.”
“What seemed apparent to me was the need for us to have our stories told and listened to. It was remarkable how many people participated in the talkback. The dialogue underscored how facing the unknown around death and dying is so difficult. So, thank you. You are helping us with your work.”
reviews
“Draws us through humour into the serious emotional business of death and back out the other side.”
— Wes Babcock, New Ottawa
“This provocative one-man show targets our sense of right and wrong. Milner wraps his questions in warm anecdotes about his family, sprinkles the show with humour, and lovingly depicts his vital, opinionated mother.”
— Patrick Langston, Ottawa Citizen
“It’s very intimate. It was polished, it was funny, but absolutely important to discuss, and Arthur Milner did a fantastic job bringing it to light. It became a story about family, about his relationship to his mother and the people around him — and a lot of light and a joy of life.”
— Jessica Ruano, Just Another Gala (podcast)
SPECIAL THANKS
Tomas Jonsson, Eric Hill, Lorne Lee, Robin Poitras, Edward Poitras, Bill Hales, Kathryn Bracht, Mason Roth, Fran Gilboy, Jan Cibart, Barbara MacDonald, Dr. Liliane Thorpe, Greg Rhiele, Jennifer Brewin, Devon Bonneau, Kenilee Kehler, Bonnie Pfeifer, Kris Alvarez, Judy Wensel, Terri Fidelak, Tanya Dahms, Laura Pfeifer, Rania Al-Harthi, John Loeppky, Sarah Bergbusch, Gaetan Benoit, Francis Marchildon, Orion Paradis, the incredibly helpful and kind staff at the Regina Public Library.
