And now, the star of our show… cancer!

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/07/2011 (5589 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Cancer, which robbed Bruce Horak of most of his sight, has returned — and this time, he is mighty grateful.

The Calgary actor lost his right eye to retinoblastoma (cancer of the retina) at 18 months, and although surgeons were able to save his left eye, he was left with only 10 per cent vision. Despite his limited sight, Horak pursued a stage career as one of the country’s few, if not only, legally blind actors.

His play This Is Cancer, co-written with partner Rebecca Northan, arrives at the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival today from last summer’s Edmonton Fringe Festival as one of the most talked-about shows on the circuit. All but one of his shows sold out, and the run garnered numerous five-star reviews.

“We had run it many times before, but it has been a difficult sell,” says Horak, a veteran of numerous Monster Theatre productions at the fringe. “Edmonton blew us away.”

The irony is that he plays Cancer, the walking, talking personification of mankind’s most feared disease, and considers the role an unlikely theatrical gift. It is a turn of events the 36 year-old Horak couldn’t have ever foreseen, even with 20-20 vision.

He appears on stage as a cocky, tumorous mass who’s sure he’s bigger than Jesus, not only because cancer has more Google hits, but because of the crazy number of benefits in his honour and the way his name is plastered all over town. Eventually audience members get to tell the Big C how they really feel about him and speak aloud the names of his victims, before a willing spectator gets to literally beat cancer with a swimming noodle.

Cancer’s comeuppance can be cathartic on both sides of the footlights.

“There have been moments when it’s been the most challenging thing I’ve ever had to do onstage,” says Horak, during a recent telephone interview. “It’s terrifying because people don’t want to even say the word. There is just vitriol.

“On the flipside, people are moved by it, like the sick woman in Calgary who talked about the 14 members of her family lost to cancer.”

Cancer re-entered Horak’s life in 2003 with the death of his father. A couple of years later he worked with horror clown Michael Kennard of Mump and Smoot fame and developed a demon character who comes up from hell. When the name of his creature was deemed too similar to another clown’s creation, Horak changed it to Cancer for his first show. Afterwards, a spectator thanked him for allowing him the opportunity to confront the enemy. The following day a caller asked him to perform at a fundraiser for his mother and Horak was inspired to develop his satirical skit into a 75-piece show.

He discovered there was no early cure for barefaced hostility to This Is Cancer.

“When I gave out handbills, people’s responses were, ‘No, I don’t want to see a show about cancer,’ or ‘A comedy about cancer? I’m not interested,'” says Horak, who, despite his sight issues, says he is most comfortable onstage.

“At the 2007 Toronto Fringe Festival, they wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot pole. We were performing for audiences of 10 and 12. We were used to it. When we first created the show, we were getting audiences of four or five.”

Even with the success in Edmonton, there is little expectation that it could follow a show like Jake’s Gift from fringe fame to mainstream triumph.

“Prospective artistic directors like the show but said they could never get it past their board of directors,” Horak says. “It’s not a show they wanted to put up their next to Annie.”

Last December he performed This Is Cancer in New York City for the producer of Rent and Avenue Q. Horak was told the show was a very brave piece of theatre and has a great future but there was nothing he could do with it.

“It’s a show that will constantly face that struggle,” he says.

 

This Is Cancer runs at Venue 16 (PTE Mainstage) to July 23.

kevin.prokosh@freepress.mb.ca