We are staging Dragonfly at the Youth Emergency Shelter. My hope is that there is enough truth in this play that folks will see these kids as I see them… people just like you and I, but who’ve had to overcome obstacles most of us can only imagine. They may not be our children biologically but they are part of our tribe and deserve the same opportunities most of us take for granted. The least of their needs is to have a roof over their heads, clothes on their backs and food in their bellies, oh yeah, and maybe to hear that their dreams just might be possible. I believe that is what YESS is trying to do and by helping them I’m hoping we can help the youngsters who are in their care.

After seeing the play Cadaver last year at the Fringe, co-written and acted by my daughter, I got quite angry at myself that my youngest child, less than half my age, had just gone out and done something I’d first planned to do before she was even born. (The inspiration in my family comes both from the older and the younger generation.) I’m thrilled that as well as moving me to get off my ass and write this play, my daughter Ellie has come all the way from Vancouver to lend her singing and acting talents and those of her close friends to give my characters voices and faces.

I conceived the idea for this play after watching a documentary called “Streetwise” more than two decades ago. It gave me a sense of déjà vu. The characters in it reminded me chillingly of the young street kids I met when I was a teenager. The documentary itself was a derivative of a Life Magazine article about homeless kids in Seattle called “Streets of the Lost”. It brought me to tears and to this day, twenty-six years later I can’t get the images of that video out of my mind. Although I’d always thought about writing a play, which would be loosely based on that documentary, I didn’t really type the first word of Dragonfly until fall 2009.

I wrote Dragonfly about and for those who’ve not been so lucky. For whatever reasons, many young people slip through the cracks in the asphalt of our society. Coming from homes where their caregivers are so wrapped up in their own problems that they fail to give their children the attention and emotional nourishment they need to navigate the potholes of what can be a very dangerous world. Having run away from home when I was young (for reasons that had nothing to do with my parents but rather a quest for adventure), I met a lot of these kids and gained a respect for their resourcefulness and ingenuity in finding ways to survive without the help of anyone else.

I’m sitting in the airport right now. I’m one of the luckiest people to have the life I do. I’ve been blessed, to grow up in a country rich with opportunity, having been doubly blessed with the parents and support group around me to encourage me to go out and chase whatever dreams I’ve imagined. Not everyone, even in this wealthy nation, have the same luck I’ve had. To be fortunate enough to have been raised by two outstanding care givers who gave me the belief in myself, to shoot for goals others might not even think are possible. My father, a well-known painter and commercial artist, and my mother, an athlete, coach, choreographer, writer and Renaissance woman, taught me that no dream is out of reach if you’re willing to dedicate yourself to it. They both lifted themselves up from the poverty of the dirty thirties and achieved many of the goals they set out to achieve.