#True story rage comics serial#

Interspersed regularly throughout the script are passages labeled “Spotlight on David” during which the character comments on the action or otherwise moves the story forward. She cried and said it was some kind of miracle.” Fraser recalls how it went in real life: “We got a huge amount of money for the dog and I showed her the entries on Facebook. He then explains social media and obtains her permission to write about both her and the dog.

#True story rage comics serial#

Fraser’s serial account on Facebook of their unfolding relationship was so vivid and touching that when Shelley’s dog, Shadow, needed some pricey medical care, the online community covered the expense through contributions.Įarly in the play, Shelley says that maybe David could write about Shadow sometime. During the latter half of that period, he found himself becoming her primary caregiver before she was ultimately moved to a facility for Alzheimer’s patients. According to Fraser, that’s a distillation of an actual friendship that lasted 10 years. The one-act play chronicles about 18 months of the characters’ lives. That opens the doorway to a deepening friendship, to David’s becoming aware of her failing memory, and to Shelley’s increasing dependency on his assistance. One day out on the sidewalk he sees she's clearly in distress and unable to properly attend to her dog so he volunteers to give her a hand. Shelley is a lesbian neighbor from an upper floor, also single and with whom he’s had a passing acquaintance, mostly just greetings by the mailboxes. In “Shelley’s Shadow,” David is single, gay and living in a Toronto apartment building, getting by on sundry writing projects. 'David McMillan” is the name Fraser gives to his alter ego in plays. It’s hard to put yourself out there and be vulnerable in autobiographical material.” It can be kind of embarrassing a lot of the time. “There’s a veneer of fiction as I change things and put them back together into something more orderly.

“About half my work is based on what happens in my life,” he says. For Fraser, 63, telling his own life stories through the medium of theater is nothing new.