Chrissie and Jeremy have spent a great deal of time in shock, waiting—for news of their baby daughter’s post-operation recovery, for weekly scans to show that her tumour is gone, for robotic forty-five-second updates from Dr. Andre Malloy, their brilliant but arrogant neuro-oncologist. The hospital waiting room has become a second home where they struggle separately as parents and as a couple, where they laugh inappropriately, lose tempers, and find resilience as they confront a roller coaster of hope and despair and a crisis of decision-making. And just beyond the waiting room, Dr. Malloy faces his own dark and risky medical dilemma. With sharp insight, Waiting Room examines medical ethics, compassion, gallows humour, and humanity in life-threatening situations.

Diane Flacks is a writer/performer. She recently completed her first book: Bear With Me... What They Don’t Tell You about Pregnancy and New Motherhood, published by McClelland and Stewart; and available nationwide. In the fall of 2006, she adapted it for a live solo performance, which toured to London’s Grand Theatre. It has also been invited to Montreal’s Just For Laugh’s Festival. In April/May 2006, her play, Care, written and performed with Richard Greenblatt, ran at the Tarragon Theatre. Diane is writing a new screenplay, The Progressive Dinner, with director Laurie Lynd, and a new play, The Five Stages, with Bev Cooper for Nightwood Theatre.

She is currently developing a new comedy television series called Here It Is, with the Heroic Film Company. She has created and toured three hit solo shows: Myth Me, (which toured nationally and to HBO studios in Los Angeles), By A Thread produced at the Tarragon (which twice toured to La Mama Theatre in New York City, was adapted for CBC television, and was nominated for a Dora Award), and Random Acts, produced by Nightwood Theatre, directed by Alisa Palmer. Random Acts was published in an anthology by Playwrights Canada Press in 2006.
Written and performed with Richard Greenblatt was the critically acclaimed play Sibs, produced twice by the Tarragon to sell-out crowds. It was nominated for the Chalmers Playwrighting award, and published in spring 2002 by Playwright’s Canada Press. Diane and Richard adapted Sibs for a CBC television movie that first aired in the fall of 2003. As an actor she has appeared in films and Canadian episodic TV series, and in numerous roles in Canadian theatres including The Anger in Ernest and Ernestine for Theatre Columbus, The Theory of Relatives (which she co-created) at the Tarragon, and The Serpent Woman for Theatre Smith Gilmour.

Diane Flacks' profile page

“The questions that Flacks raises, about the doctor/patient relationship, the physician as a godlike figure and the decision to experiment for the good of science rather than that of the patient, are carefully posed and left for us to ponder.” —Jon Kaplan, NOW Magazine

“I was entirely absorbed […] I cannot imagine that anyone would be unmoved by the scenarios and relationships depicted in Waiting Room.”—Dorianne Emmerton, Mooney on Theatre