Ron Blicq and Shoestring Players

Shoestring Players of Winnipeg presented Ron Blicq’s play, Closure, at the Forrest Nickerson Theatre in the Deaf Centre, 285 Pembina Highway, from June 12 to 16, and in the A-Spire Theatre in Gimli from July 5 to 7.

The play is based on the true stories of 25,000 British war children who were born of unions between Canadian servicemen and unwed single women in Britain during World War 2. One of the young women was Wendy Barlow, who defied social prejudices and kept her son Donald. The boy grew into an adult never knowing his father was a Canadian serviceman.

After his mother dies, Donald goes in search of his father who, to his dismay, refuses to see him and won’t even admit he knew Donald’s mother. The story builds from that moment, with tense drama in both the British and Canadian households.

In writing ‘Closure,’ playwright Ron Blicq drew on his experience as a navigator in WW2, flying Mosquito fighter/bombers with the RCAF.

“I was prompted to write ‘Closure’ after listening to a radio documentary,” he explains. “The BBC was interviewing men and women in the UK whose mothers had a relationship with a Canadian serviceman during WW2, and they now wanted to find their fathers, in other words, to seek closure.”

To date, ‘Closure’ has been produced in the UK, in Australia, in New Zealand (twice), in Texas in the US, and Vancouver in Canada.

Congratulations Ron!