Aiming to Float - Beautifully Written, Beautifully Read
Aiming to Float is the first dramatic reading in the series, Advance Theatre: New Works by Women. Written by Janet Hinton after having experience both as a patient and an instructor at a pain clinic, Aiming to Float examines a number of common themes against the backdrop of life altering pain.
Seven months after ‘the accident’ Seamus is not the man he used to be and Chris is still on the waiting list for therapy at a pain clinic. Unable to function as a mother, wife, money-earner, or school volunteer, pain and dysfunction have become the norm for Chris.
By the time a spot opens up, Chis is ornery and her sarcasm is as sharp as her belief in the future is dull. Uncooperative, foul-mouthed and angry, Chris and Justin, her packed-tight therapist, encounter immediate tension.
He wants to help her in a clinical sense but fears the real connection that is developing. Chris’ emotional and physical pain is so crippling, she resists the temptation to even feel hope. Justin, although not physically injured, is equally injured emotionally and something in Chris sparks his own personal reckoning.
As they explore their own demons, they find in each other a connection that can’t be ignored. As Chris’ relationship with Seamus falls apart, opening new doors, the question is… Will the new people that emerge from the stormy waters find each other?
The magic of the play comes with Janet Hinton’s ability to use metaphor so well. How many ways can a person float and how does it relate to inner consciousness?
Aiming to Float also asks us to examine what it means to have a life altering illness or accident, one in which no one will ever be the same again. If you or someone you love has had chronic debilitating pain, this play may help you realize that while there may be no return, there is a way, a beautiful way, forward.
Adam Olgui, as Justin and Gili Roskies, as Chris read beautifully under the direction of Laura McLean.
This is the first dramatic reading in the Advance Theatre series which gives voice to women in Canadian theatre. Women represent a dismal 27% of playwrights in Canada and the number is dwindling. These five new plays were written and directed by Canadian women and will be showing for five days over the course of the Fringe.
They are presented every day at 1:30PM at False Creek Gym.