Actor lightens up darkness of cancer with one-man show

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Bruce Horak has been living with the effects of cancer for almost 36 years, and playing Cancer for six. As the title character in his one-man show This is Cancer, Horak, 37, gives audiences a chance to laugh at the disease, cry about it, and literally beat it (albeit with a pool noodle).

Dressed in a lumpy, form-fitting gold lamé bodysuit, Horak plays Cancer as an arrogant jerk of a character who believes he is adored. After all, he's been around forever, and people all over the world are Googling cancer, running for cancer, raising money for cancer.

About halfway through the show when he asks the audience what they think of him, he gets a blast of reality, and the show takes a turn.

"It's not about making fun of people with cancer. It really is about pointing that flashlight on the disease and taking some of the darkness away from that, and fear away from it," Horak said from Edmonton this week, where he will perform This is Cancer at the Fringe festival. "To hear people actually laughing at cancer is great. And it's bringing a lot of joy to people, which seems strange to say about cancer. But it does do that. It makes people feel a little bit lighter."

Horak knows the darkness of cancer very well. Diagnosed with retinoblastoma when he was just over a year old, he lost his right eye and most of the sight in his left eye. With less than 10 per cent vision, he is one of the few legally blind working actors in Canada. He is also a musician and visual artist. (The Way I See It, a show of his portraits, will be at Toronto's Harbourfront Centre at the end of September.)

Then in 2003, on Horak's 29th birthday, his father died. Esophageal cancer.

An actor and writer, Horak subscribes to the theory that great art – even comedy – can come from one's darkest places. Two years after his father's death, Horak was working on a new character: a twisted demon of a clown who tries to recruit an audience member to return to hell with him. Set to perform the character at a Toronto cabaret, Horak learned another, more established, clown on the program had a similar name to his. Clown politics being what they are, he had to find a new name. He chose Cancer.

"All the other comics and clowns on the bill said 'look if you call yourself Cancer and go out there, they're gonna kill you.'"

They didn't. In fact, after the show, Horak was approached by an audience member, who had been fighting cancer for a number of years. "He said to me this was the first time he'd really ever laughed at cancer, and it's really nice to have that point of attack where you can actually direct your energy at something and put a face to it. He said 'Keep going.'"

The next year, Horak grew the idea from a 10-minute bit to a 75-minute show for the SummerWorks Theatre Festival. He co-wrote the show with Rebecca Northan, who also directs. (She is also Horak's ex-wife.)

On the first night, a handful of people showed up – about six, estimates Horak, who knows that a show called This is Cancer can be a tough sell. The next day, the audience doubled. By the end of the run, the show was almost selling out.

The second show of that run was particularly poignant: it was Aug. 5, 2006, exactly three years after his father's death. And his mother was in the audience. "She had no idea what this thing was going to be, and she said after that it was the best anniversary that she could have imagined."

The show includes a recording of Carl Horak, a month before he died, dictating his obituary to his son.

"Every night I would sit there and listen to my dad's voice," says Horak, who was born in Calgary and is now based in Toronto. "Unlike a photograph, which is kind of still and distant, the voice of someone is like drawing them into the room with you. And at first it was really hard. But now, it's like sitting in the room with the guy. Sure I miss him, but it's a really nice thing to get to be visited every night by someone who obviously influenced this show."

The show has evolved as it plays the Fringe circuit and beyond. Recently Horak took it to New York for a showcase, arranged by a producer of Avenue Q, Rent and Northan's Blind Date.

This is Cancer has generated a lot of fan mail and media interest, including a CNN piece.

It has also generated some anger. After one short cabaret performance, an audience member approached Horak and punched him in the face. "He said 'that was the most offensive thing I've ever seen, expletive, expletive, expletive. You should be ashamed of yourself. I have cancer, I'm dying, there's nothing funny about it.' And he just wailed at me and stormed out of the theatre."

Horak doesn't do the character outside the context of the show any more, but he does plan to keep playing Cancer.

"I recall when we did SummerWorks … Rebecca kind of sat back and said 'you know you're going to be playing this character probably for the rest of your life. Are you ready for that? Are you ready to keep playing this guy? It's going to be what you're associated with.'

"I said yeah, I'm in. I'm committed to it."

The Edmonton International Fringe Festival runs from Aug. 11 to 21. This is Cancer will also appear at the Vancouver International Fringe Festival, which runs Sept. 8 to 18.

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My Brother Sang Like Roy Orbison: San Francisco actor Randy Rutherford presents an autobiographical coming-of-age story, recounting his relationship with his beloved, older, sort-of step-brother as the Vietnam War looms.