How It Ends

By Debbie Patterson and Michael Sobota

• First produced by Sick + Twisted Theatre at Prairie Theatre Exchange, Winnipeg, in April 2019.
• Debbie wrote the play while adjusting to disability herself.
• Debbie wanted to explore the topic of end-of-life choices when medical assistance in dying legislation was being changed and how people with disabilities are so critical of it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Playwrights Canada Press
• Release date: Jan 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9780369104014

Debbie Patterson

Debbie Patterson is a Winnipeg playwright, director, and actor. Trained at the National Theatre School of Canada, she is a founding member of Shakespeare in the Ruins (SIR), and the founder and current artistic director of Sick + Twisted Theatre. Playwriting credits include How It Ends, Sargent & Victor & Me (both for Sick + Twisted Theatre), the musicals Head (SIR) and Molotov Circus (SummerWorks), and numerous TYA shows for Prairie Theatre Exchange. In 2016, Debbie became the first physically disabled actor to play the title role in Richard III in a professional Canadian production. She was honoured with the United Nations Platform for Action Committee Manitoba’s 2014 Activist Award and the 2017 Winnipeg Arts Council Making a Mark Award. She was twice shortlisted for the Gina Wilkinson Prize. She is the matriarch of a family of artists and a proud advocate for disability justice, living a wheelchair-enabled life in Winnipeg and in a cabin on the shore of Lake Winnipeg with her partner and collaborator, Arne MacPherson.

Book preview

How It Ends

Debbie Patterson

Playwrights Canada Press

Toronto

Copyright

How It Ends © Copyright 2022 by Debbie Patterson

First edition: January 2023

Printed and bound in Canada by Rapido Books, Montreal

Jacket design by Kisscut Design

Jacket image © AUDSHULE / Stocksy.com

Playwrights Canada Press

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No part of this book may be reproduced, downloaded, or used in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, except for excerpts in a review or by a licence from Access Copyright, www.accesscopyright.ca.

For professional or amateur production rights, please contact Playwrights Canada Press.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: How it ends / Debbie Patterson.

Names: Patterson, Debbie, 1966- author.

Description: A play.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20220460493 | Canadiana (ebook) 20220460531

| ISBN 9780369104007 (softcover) | ISBN 9780369104014 (EPUB)

| ISBN 9780369104021 (PDF)

Classification: LCC PS8631.A8465 H69 2022 | DDC C812/.6—dc23

Playwrights Canada Press operates on land which is the ancestral home of the Anishinaabe Nations (Ojibwe / Chippewa, Odawa, Potawatomi, Algonquin, Saulteaux, Nipissing, and Mississauga), the Wendat, and the members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora), as well as Metis and Inuit peoples. It always was and always will be Indigenous land.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council (OAC), Ontario Creates, and the Government of Canada for our publishing activities.

Logo: Canada Council for the Arts.Logo: Government of Canada.Logo: Ontario Creates.Logo: Ontario Arts Council.

Dedication

In memory of Jim Derksen, survivor, gambler, activist, father, poet, abilities mentor, visionary, Platonic thinker.

Foreword

by Michael Sobota

I’ve known Debbie Patterson since she was a young woman growing up in Thunder Bay, Ontario. She was a sassy, classy woman earning her craft and learning the mysteries of theatre and live performances. She learned a lot.

When she moved away to Winnipeg, Manitoba, to continue her career, raise a family, and become a passionate advocate on behalf of many things, including disabled communities, I saw her less often. I experienced her less often. But my admiration for who she is and what she does grew constantly.

So when an opportunity arose to go see the premier production of How It Ends in Winnipeg, a couple of friends and I jumped in a car and were off to see her wizardry. I didn’t readily understand how apt it was to go on a journey to experience How It Ends.

Most plays are about journeys of some sort. And relationships. And ask questions. The good ones, anyway. Patterson’s script does all of these things, weaving metaphors and metaphysics and tricks into a story about dying. How we die. How we want to die. Her layered text references Viola Spolin’s Improvisation for the Theater and Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Pinter’s The Homecoming and even Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel, among others. These are heady references. Her play starts out in a familiar place: a brother and sister are fishing on a Canadian lake. They tease each other about death, like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, until a storm arises and changes their and our perspectives.