The show, created by renown Canadian actor Shawn Wright, tells the ‘heartwarming and hilarious’ story of the actor’s relationship with his late mother.
“When my mother entered the nursing home, my sister made a schedule for my siblings and my time was designated as 8 p.m. to 9 p.m….Unfortunately, this was also the time that my mother’s favorite show was on, Murder She Wrote. So I was not allowed to speak as long as Angela Lansbury spoke. But we would have 5 minutes at a time during commercials to talk and we would talk about everything under the sun.”
Wright says his mother was ‘unintentionally hilarious’ and he started transcribing their conversations and posting them on social media where they quickly garnered thousands of likes. He then put them together into the one-man show which would become Ghostlight.
“It’s sort of a cross between Tuesdays with Morrie and The Golden Girls. It is a meditation on grief. It is a celebration of caregivers….who we are once our parents are gone, how do we continue their legacy while trying to forge our own? How we’re like our parents and how we are not like our parents and the pros and cons of both of those things.”
With a 30 year career, Wright credits his passion for the stage to his mother who loved theatre and was an amateur actor. Ghost Light is his first play .
“I wrote this play so my mother could make her professional stage debut.”
Wright has done dozens of productions for the prestigious Stratford and Shaw festivals. He was in the original Los Angeles cast of Mamma Mia, the original Toronto cast of Jersey Boys and the original Broadway workshop cast of Ragtime.
On TV he has starred in Murdoch Mysteries, Due South, along with numerous other roles.
He has won Toronto’s Dora Award and Stratford’s Guthrie Award.
Shawn Wright’s Ghostlight comes to the Village Playhouse in Bancroft for two shows only.
Feb. 1st at 7 p.m. & Feb. 2nd at 2 p.m.
