Photo by Dahlia Katz
The Boy in the Moon
by Emil Sher
The Boy in the Moon is the true story of Ian Brown and Johanna Schneller’s journey of raising their son Walker, severely disabled due to a rare genetic disorder, Cardiofaciocutaneous Syndrome or CFC. Director Chris Abraham (of the original production at Crow’s Theatre in Toronto) reflects upon the impact of the play in that “it challenges us to think about the fundamentally fragile and uncertain nature of parenting and of life."
Cast & Creative
Liisa Repo-Martell
Johanna
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Liisa Repo-Martell is an award-winning stage and screen actor and one the founding members of Artists for Real Climate Action. She has also written a new adaptation of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya for Crows Theatre and Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler for Coal Mine Theatre and was one of writer/producers of the satirical web series, The Big Oil Alliance.
Acting credits include: Theatre: Uncle Vanya (Crows Theatre), Towards Youth ( Crows Theatre) A Beautiful View (Festival Players) What a Young Wife Ought to Know (2b Theatre) The Boy in the Moon (Crows Theatre), The Watershed and Seeds (Porte Parole), Other Desert Cities (The Citadel Theatre) Creditors (Coalmine Theatre), Happy Place, Uncle Vanya, Antigone, The Lesson, School for Wives, Top Girls (Soulpepper) Eternal Hydra (Crow’s Theatre) Midsummer Night’s Dream (Stratford Festival) King Lear (Stratford Festival).
Film/T.V.: Hudson and Rex, Saint Pierre, Happy Place (Sienna Films), The Umbrella Academy. Upcoming: You, Always (CanStage)
David Storch
Ian
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David has worked across Canada as an actor, director, and teacher and has recently begun directing for television.
Recent work as an actor includes The Boy in the Moon, What Lies Before Us (Crow's Theatre); Arigato, Tokyo (Buddies in Bad Times); Cake and Dirt, In the Next Room, or The Vibrator Play, The Misanthrope (Tarragon); Picture This, Noises Off, A Month in the Country, Antigone, Travesties, Mary Stuart, King Lear, Translations (Soulpepper); The Overwhelming (Studio 180); Frost/Nixon (Vancouver Playhouse, Canadian Stage); Hamlet, Servant of Two Masters, Measure for Measure, and Wit (Citadel Theatre).
Emil Sher
Playwright
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Emil Sher writes prose and plays for the young and the once-were-young. His first novel, Young Man with Camera, has received numerous awards and honours. Emil is a laureate of the 2014 K.M. Hunter Artist Award in Literature. Emil has written the stage play adaptations of Karen Levine’s Hana’s Suitcase and Ian Brown’s The Boy in the Moon, and the script and lyrics for Roch Carrier’s The Hockey Sweater. He was also the writer for The Book of Ashes, inspired by the true story of an Iraqi librarian who saved tens of thousands of books in the midst of war.
Kelly McNamee
Hayley
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Kelly McNamee is a Toronto based performer and filmmaker. She has appeared in television series such as Murdoch Mysteries, 12 Monkeys, Rogue, Sensitive Skin, and The Next Step Aftershow. Theatre credits include Boy In The Moon (Crow’s Theatre) & Domesticated (Company Theatre/CanStage). She is also a founding member of Alright Alice Productions, a filmmaking company, with a focus on bridging the gap between emerging artists and established professionals in the Canadian Film & Television industry. They are currently in post-production for “Artifice” and run networking events that feature expert panellists on a variety of topics about filmmaking called “AAP Panel Night Series”. In addition to her film and acting work she makes up one third of Lunar Bloom, an all female, vocal, folk, trio.
Ian Brown
Author, The Boy in the Moon
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Ian Brown writes immersive, deeply reported, narratively-driven feature stories about a wide variety of subjects. He began his professional life at The Financial Post, writing about real estate, corporate intrigue and Ontario politics. Moving to Los Angeles, he wrote about golf, surfing and American culture. His three-part series about his disabled son was among the first multi-part multi-media stories published in The Globe and Mail, and went on to become a multiple-award winning book, The Boy in the Moon, which The New York Times judged one of the 10 best books of 2011. It has been published in seven languages.