Pilot Project

Hank Dunfield, aged ninety-nine, was an accomplished tail gunner during the Second World War. Now the “tough old bird” lives in a long-term-care home, where he tells off-colour jokes, needles his fellow residents, and sneaks contraband sweets past exasperated nurses. He suffers from dementia, but he’s whip-smart and laugh-out-loud funny. Candy canes? “Only truly enjoyed by felons in need of a shiv.” Hors d’oeuvres? “Little things that look like they died at birth served on toast.”

Hank is one of three characters in Meg Braem’s Flight Risk, a play first performed in Calgary in 2017. Seven years later, and in the wake of COVID‑19, the pragmatic meditation on mortality feels especially poignant. Braem doesn’t wring her hands over questions of death. She’s practical and to the point: We’re all going to get older. We’re all going to die. Given that reality, can someone still living be so far gone that they no longer have a right to self-determination? Can we...