Casey and Diana, coming to Theatre Aquarius this month, tells a story about a time when humanity lost its compassion and a much-loved princess showed us the way back.

It’s the story of Princess Diana’s historic 1991 visit to Casey House, an AIDS hospice in Toronto, at the height of the devastating pandemic. Photos of the princess holding hands with HIV-positive patients were seen around the world and began to change the stigma that had led to devastating treatment of those with AIDS.

While the setting of this play is now well over 30 years ago, it is an era we forgot or minimize at our peril. Casey House emerged in a Toronto where people died of AIDS alone and without any human compassion shown to them. They were discarded out of fear and homophobia and judgement.

Director Andrew Kushnir says AIDS is not the antagonist of the play, though it would be tempting to make it so because it has claimed the lives of over 40 million people, including nearly 25,000 Canadians since this country’s first case in March 1982.

“AIDS is a tempting foe for what it has taken from us and so many of our peers, let alone what it has taken from the parents and lovers and friends still among us who survive those lost,” he wrote in the program notes when the play premiered at the Stratford Festival in 2023.

“The villain is how criminally long it took for the world to change. We — our collective humanity — could not muster enough care fast enough to avert disaster and catastrophic loss.”

Tim McClemont, executive director of the Positive Health Network, which provides services in Hamilton, Halton, Haldimand-Norfolk and Brant, was thrilled to hear that Theatre Aquarius was staging Casey and Diana because the subject of the play resonates today.

“The issue of stigma is still as relevant as it was back then, when Diana shook the hand of the patient at Casey House. There was a worldwide impact from that … it was a pretty groundbreaking thing,” says McClemont, who has worked in HIV care for many years and lost his first partner to AIDS.

Diana’s visit came at a time when governments weren’t taking enough action and an HIV diagnosis was a death sentence. But the play isn’t just history, says McClemont.

“It’s another opportunity for enhanced awareness about HIV now as it stands, not only in 2025 but in this area, too.”

The Positive Health Network (formerly the AIDS Network) will bring groups of staff, volunteers and clients to see the play and will also provide one of its memorial quilts to hang in a reflection space at Theatre Aquarius.

by Meredith MacLeod for hamiltoncitymagazine.ca

Casey and Diana

By Nick Green

Directed by Andrew Kushnir

Originally commissioned by The Stratford Festival.

Produced by permission of the Playwright and Marquis Literary (Colin Rivers) mqlit.ca

A co-production with The Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre

FEB 19, 2025 TO MAR 8, 2025

For tickets visit theatreaquarius.org