←Recommendations of What we need at the end of the day…

In just a few pages this excellent play hits hard. It is always difficult to say goodbye, but when there is so much hurt and so much left unsaid, it's difficult to forgive, and therefore to say those goodbyes.
The dialogue Brian uses is intense, close, gritty, yet there is so much live hear which is still apparent.
So moving.

This beautiful play about closure for family in a father’s final moments reveals how complicated our familial relationships can be, especially if we are estranged from a parent and have to deal with unexpected loss. This play deals more with siblings than parent-child bonding, even though we don’t know much about the brother/sister relationship, which is what makes the play so fascinating to me. How has the father’s lack of affection impacted the siblings’ relationship? Maybe this a new start for them. This is a gift for actors.

Wow, this is a strong gut punch and an important play that a lot of people can related to. I love Brian's mastery of dialogue and clear, straightforward storytelling. This meditation on dying and grief is powerful and very real. Thank you for your words and this play, Brian. Great work.

The hardest thing of all, I think, is to forgive without forgetting. Molly and Dean are together at the bedside of the father who abandoned them struggling with this very dilemma. This moving play gives full weight to many of the emotions people experience in this situation. We are left with the profound question: Is it possible that we forgive for ourselves and not for the forgiven?

I hear so many stories from friends of parents who didn't love them or didn't stay to raise them and I always think, how could a person be that broken inside and not have it in themselves to at least stay connected with a child as they grew up even if they didn't "want" or "love" them . There are so many duties in our lives that we've instilled around us to keep order. Sometimes it's better if we just let some of them slip from our list of responsibilities and Polak's play gives us an idea about one.

BRIAN JAMES POLAK’s play is about a brother and sister, who have hatred towards their dying father. They need to decide if they will talk to him, and if so, what they or their dad might say. In his dramatic short play, “What We Need At The End Of The Day”, we can feel the emotions of the brother and sister as they consider what they will do.

Beautiful stuff. This brother and sister struggling with the need to comfort their dad as he dies, to do this act of love for a father who didn't seem to love them. Does doing this act of forgiveness help them or him? Is forgiveness the only way to live without his ghost, without being haunted by regret? There's no way to know, to see past this moment of dying that only comes once. But, it's a moment that lives with us the rest of our life. Only theatre offers us the shared bearing witness of this experience in real time.

When your loved ones die, you're supposed to forgive and feel only affection? What about when there's an enormous amount of pain at play? And do you need to be there? A powerful portrait of those last moments, everything that rises within and the questions that come to the surface.

A GEM of a short play! A beautiful understanding of space and how hard it is for these two siblings to be in the same room at this moment. And he lets his characters go all the way emotionally. Polak calls attention to the doors as thresholds, and I can feel the power they hold for both characters from the very beginning so that the ending holds the power it does. Wonderful dialogue that provides a great understanding of the entire family life they lived through and the pain that has brought them to this moment.

Sometimes when loved ones die, we don't have the opportunity to be with them, to speak to them and that can be rough. Sometimes we can be around our loved ones when they die, and -- as Brian James Polak shows in this short drama -- that can be worse. These characters don't exist in the vacuum of the moment, Polak endows them with a history that affects their choices in the present. That's a treat for audiences and actors alike.