PATIENT COMMANDO & Cancer Can’t Dance Like This

I’ve been working with Zal Press who I met through the Patients’ Association of Canada on publicity for the launch of his entertainment production company called PATIENT COMMANDO. Their debut show was last night, a one-man comedic play by Daniel Stolfi called Cancer Can’t Dance Like This. It’s tough to pitch something you’ve not seen or experienced before, so now that I have I can say emphatically — go see it whenever you get a chance. Dan reads from the journal he kept during two gruelling years of chemo and he acts “in character” of the things chemo took from him — his hair is an Italian barber, his sex drive is an innuendo-loving lothario, his appetite is a guy still living in his parent’s basement waiting for that next tray of lasagna.  Dan’s story has a huge effect on the audience — we were up and cheering for him by the last scene when he dances (to a Michael Jackson medley no less!) once again.

PATIENT COMMANDO is a one-of-a-kind production company in that Zal and his team (including the very wry and talented Brian Smith from Second City) produce live theatre, workshops and stand-up with the focus on the patient experience. One of the things they plan to do is take the idea of “humour therapy” into medical schools across the country, so that students understand the patient perspective early on in their medical training. Seeing a show like Stolfi’s  Cancer Can’t Dance Like This can only help bring an enlightened understanding to the rigors of chemo from someone who knows it first-hand.

I managed to get a bit of media already for PATIENT COMMANDO in the National Post and on CBC Radio’s “Here & Now” and there’ll be much more to come!

Advertisement