I’ve long planned to write several plays about my life, from my youth in New York, to my days living here in the Chicago area. But Talking with My Dad was not originally among those I planned.
Two years ago, though, life intervened. I had severe chest pains that summer for several days and eventually ended up in a hospital emergency room wondering if I would die as my father did from a heart attack. 
I went into the hospital in complete denial that the same thing could be happening to me as had happened to him. Hadn’t I been scrupulous about getting annual checkups? Hadn’t I quickly started taking medications when my blood pressure spiked higher, unlike my father who hated doctors and never went or never took blood pressure medications?
But I would eventually undergo surgery to re-open an almost completely blocked artery fairly close to my heart.
As most writers do, rather than try to sublimate that terrifying experience, I decided instead to write about it. Talking with My Dad is the result.
Talking with My Dad is the story of a man facing his own mortality as he waits for doctors to determine if he’s had a heart attack, or is about to have one. Alone at night in a darkened hospital room, he wrestles with the demons of his past, with the guilt he feels over his father’s death, with the pain he feels when anyone tries to get close to him to help.
This is the story of an everyman, trying to survive an extraordinary ordeal.
Please join us as we watch Frankie make this difficult journey.
Tickets for Talking with My Dad are now on sale for our shows Nov. 15-16 and Nov. 22-23. Simply click here, pick the date and show time you wish and then enter the number of tickets you’d like to purchase.
John N. Frank