Much like Home for Boys, Don't You Dare Run Away, and A Great and Terrible Wilderness, this piece started off as a tiny exercise at University of Toronto. This was in my third year playwriting class, and good god, I was not clicking. I already wrote an early version of Ruby in the Dust read dramatically in Stratford, so it's not like I couldn't write. But I think it was a combination of my young, stubborn brain unwilling to challenge my comforts, as well as the fact that my instructor was Guillermo Verdecchia, whom I've admired since high school, so I was bloody intimidated. 

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So after a few fumbling attempts to impress - outlandish stories, one including a robot girlfriend (this was in 2013!) - I decided to dare to be the thing I've been fighting against: boring. I just wanted to write about a father and son, estranged but trying to reconcile. And they were musicians. Yeah, close to home, but what the hell, I was worried about flunking the class. Hence, I gave to the world (the university scene really) Noah and Ray.

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For the end of semester presentation, we were to present these pieces at the Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse, read by actors who were not in the class. To play the role of young Noah, I immediately thought of the warmth and humour of my friend Peter Demakos - better known to families as Pete Moss, or to indie darlings as the leader of Blimp Rock. Not an actor, I thought he would be perfect for the role. I couldn't really find any 50-something guy to play his dad, Ray, but I thought of the most versatile person I've had the pleasure of working with: Caitlin Driscoll, an adult woman, nailed the role of seven year old title character at our Springworks reading of Ruby in the Dust. She can do anything, so why not play an older man? And they both nailed it. 

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Flash forward to 2026. I've always had this story in the bag of ideas in case I needed it. I was going to do Helen of Roy at the Fort Frances Public Library Technology Centre as part of our ongoing play reading series. See the Helen of Roy section in this website for more context, but to briefly summarize, I decided to not do it and switched everything around. I had, however, already asked the Mayor of Fort Frances, Andrew Hallikas, to star as Roy, an aging redneck. Now that Helen of Roy was going to London instead, and aging down Roy, I figured I'd write a new piece that suited Andrew. Then my mind raced back to Noah and Ray.

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A few problems presented itself: Ray was too similar to Roy, not to mention that Calls from Castlemar changed Randall to Ray. An early draft of Helen of Roy revealed the identity of PJ's biological father, James. I decided to cut that and make it ambiguous, as MC's pregnancy journey was her own, and not some 'after-school' condemnation of teen pregnancy. So with the name James kicking around, I decided to replace Ray with James. Not intentional, but James is my dad's middle name. Go figure.

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Then the subject of James' age came to my attention.  I wanted to put the dad's age into the late sixties. Again, remember that Andrew was supposed to play Roy, but then I aged that part down. I also decided to make him a star of the 90s alternative rock scene, as Don't You Dare Run Away focused on the 70s and 80s folk scene. It wouldn't be infeasible for grunge rockers to enjoy their careers in their mid to late thirties (look at Kim Thayil of Soundgarden, or Mark Arm of Mudhoney). So the age works out fine.  James would be about 66, and Noa would be on the verge of 30. 

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Finally, circumstances helped shape the development of the piece. Mindful of Andrew being a public figure, I was gauging how comfortable he would be with swearing - Ray swore a lot in the old version. Instead of putting the mayor in an awkward spot, I made it a character trait that, despite his rough and tumble rock n' roll persona, he could not bring himself to swear in front of his daughter, much to Noa's annoyance. So with the casting in place, I had to find the perfect Noa, and I did: Ally Lewis, who appeared in Don't You Dare Run Away as an audio recording, playing a CBC announcer, an Australian telemarketer, and Jennifer Coolidge playing a CBC announcer. As well, Toronto gutter fuzz punks Rhynos will be playing the role of James' band.

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Shelter in Place is in the same universe as Home for Boys, Helen of Roy, and Jackpine Fire.