In Conversation with Other People Creative Team

Canadian Stage

The Relay

We sat down with director Brendan Healy, dramaturge Daniel MacIvor, and writer/performer Daniel Brooks, for an inside look at the play, Other People.

Creating, rehearsing and opening a new play can be stressful under the best of circumstances. Daniel Brooks is doing it during a pandemic, and with a terminal cancer diagnosis. It’s a remarkable feat, and an unforgettable work.

But we’ll let the creative team speak for themselves.

The first time I met Daniel Brooks was through his work. When I was a young, aspiring artist, I saw a number of his productions, and they all inspired me in different ways, and really showed me the possibilities of what theatre could be.

He brings together in his theatre, great storytelling with deep ideas. He’s able to use storytelling to investigate, and express, and challenge big ideas. And that marriage of great storytelling and big thinking... it’s deeply inspirational.

– Brendan Healy

Daniel [MacIvor] and I have really grown up together in the theatre. So, I feel our artistic lives are very linked. There's a marriage of sorts, and a friendship that is very interested in being reckless with the boundaries between art and life. – Daniel Brooks

Daniel [Brooks] is, you know, my best friend, and my brother and so many things, I mean it. So, you can imagine the, the complexity of that, right? It's a very complex relationship with lots of deep, deep love and lots of prickliness and all kinds of strange things in it. So, I would describe Daniel as wildly, wildly intelligent, much more fun than people think people think he's very serious. But and but he's actually a bit of a goof.   – Daniel MacIvor