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Humour helps characters cope in Forget About Tomorrow

Arts Club presents new play from Jill Daum about the impact of Alzheimer’s
Forget About Tomorrow
Forget About Tomorrow features a cast including Craig Erickson and Jennifer Lines. The Arts Club production, written by Jill Daum with songs composed by John Mann, is a dramatic comedy that weaves together the experiences of a family in the months following a diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer’s.

Arts Club Theatre Company, Forget About Tomorrow, until March 25 at Goldcorp Stage at the BMO Theatre Centre. Tickets from $29 at artsclub.com or the Arts Club box office at 604-687-1644.

When Spirit of the West singer John Mann publicly revealed his diagnosis with Alzheimer’s in 2014, his wife, Jill Daum, had already started writing a play based on their experience with the disease.

“I actually started writing it before we told anybody, so it was very cathartic for me,” Daum tells the News, before the Arts Club opening of Forget About Tomorrow.

“The play is about that painful road from hearing the diagnosis to accepting it, because it’s very hard to be in the moment and appreciate what you have if you’re trying to run away from it or be in denial.”

Daum kept her heavy secret she was carrying around from her theatre writing group, Wet Ink Collective, where members read and discuss their work to get feedback.

In those sessions Daum would write scenes loosely based on her family’s struggle with an Alzheimer diagnosis.

“I could have told them but I felt like as soon as they knew there would be so much pity and empathy that they would no longer feel like they could criticize or be honest,” says Daum.

“And I was writing scenes about this family where the husband had the early onset diagnosis and everybody was really impressed by how much I knew about Alzheimer’s.”

Asked how true to her life the characters and plot are, Daum, a veteran playwright who’s been immersed in the arts and entertainment world for a lifetime, along with her Canadian folk-rock star husband, says the unexpected. 

“My life’s not that interesting,” she says.

“I think I did more like a writer does where you glean from everywhere you can. There’s things in the play about Alzheimer’s that I learned from other people as well that I put in, you know, little facts or information, or ways of coping.”

Humour is the coping mechanism Daum gave the play’s characters to portray how the afflicted and their loved ones live day-to-day with Alzheimer’s and its unpredictable nature.

Humour is the main constant directly lifted from Daum and Mann’s lives and injected into Forget About Tomorrow.

The couple met in the mid-1980s at the Railway Club in Vancouver when Mann’s star was on the rise. Daum was instantly drawn to her future husband.

“I mean, everyone fell in love with John,” she says. “He was the most charismatic, attractive, talented guy. He was irresistible.”

The couple built a wonderful life together with kids, but it all came crashing down when Mann was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s at the age of 51. His neurodegenerative disease has now progressed to the point that Mann is in a care home.

Forget About Tomorrow is the couple’s final collaboration, with Mann penning a couple songs for the play – the last two works he ever wrote. One is a love song which the husband writes for his wife.

“When I first heard it performed in the play it really got me,” says Daum. “Working on the music was as cathartic for him as writing the words were for me.”

Forget About Tomorrow is described as a dramatic comedy that weaves together the experiences of Jane (Jennifer Lines), Tom (Craig Erickson), and their two adult children (Aren Okemaysim and Aleita Northey) in the months following Tom’s diagnosis with early-onset Alzheimer’s.

Each family member struggles with their own fears, questions, memories, and purposes, and the family’s unity is put into peril when Jane questions her loyalty to a man who will ultimately forget her name.

“We’re really lucky because we did get some of the best actors in the country,” says Daum of the casting.

Erickson is perfect for the part, declares Daum, explaining how he embodies Mann’s talent for playing guitar.

“And he actually even looks like John, a young John, which is pretty eerie sometimes,” adds Daum.

Daum loves Jennifer Lines as the lead female character, Jane.

“There’s just something about her … she’s just so darn likeable and you just want to hang out with her and be with her. And I wanted Jane to have that quality.”

Ultimately, Daum hopes the audience walks away with a better understanding of Alzheimer’s, that it lessens the fear and shame for those who have it and that it changes some people’s misconceptions about the disease.

“They see Alzheimer’s as these retired people,” says Daum. “They don’t get the financial strain. And to me that was a really important aspect to put in it. You can see the toll that it takes on the main character. He loses the car and it gets towed. And how’s she going to pay the towing fee? She’s got a kid in school.”

Seeing those struggles that Daum has lived played out on stage isn’t as hard for her as one would think.

“I’ve never understood why anyone would want to slow down and stare at an accident,” says Daum. “I avert my eyes from that kind of hardship. What I want to gaze at, long and hard, is someone surviving hardship and overcoming their adversity. I find that healing and helpful.”

Daum says she kisses Mann a lot these days.

“I feel like that’s my way that I reach him now.”