Waiting Room

By Diane Flacks

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Playwrights Canada Press
• Release date: Dec 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781770915657

Diane Flacks

Diane Flacks is a writer/actor. Her plays include Bear With Me; Random Acts; Myth Me; Waiting Room; By a Thread; Gravity Calling; Luba, Simply, Luba and Theory of Relatives, as well as SIBS and Care with Richard Greenblatt. Diane also writes extensively for TV (among others, Working the Engels, Workin’ Moms, Baroness von Sketch Show, Qanurli and Kids in the Hall). She has been the national parenting columnist for CBC Radio, and a contributor to DNTO and Tapestry. She was a feature columnist for the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail. Diane has performed comedy everywhere from New York’s Town Hall to local bars to the Winnipeg Comedy Festival. Her four solo shows have toured nationally and internationally. She is currently developing a one-​person play called Guilt and a play with the Stratford Festival called Blessed. She has numerous acting credits over twenty-​five years in the business, and in 2019 she played Nathan in Nathan the Wise at Stratford.