Ontario, Canada – from www.sudburystar.com – Fun With Dick started it all. Then came Deep Throat, followed closely by Debbie Does Dallas. All respectable in their own rights. And all films that Norm Foster, www.normfoster.com knows well. Very, very well.

Or at least, his character does.

Foster is the creator of Skin Flick, which will run at the Sudbury Theatre Centre from Feb. 17 to March 6.

The play follows a middle-class couple with few employment opportunities and a porn video, rented accidentally but never taken back. After a bit of coaxing, the couple decides to shoot their own porno, hoping to make some cash.

So yes. At the end of the day, Foster, a Canadian playwright, wrote a play about a porn film. And yeah, it has a nurse’s outfit in it.

But it’s about more than that.

“The story is actually a love story between this couple that have been married for many, many years,” said Foster, who, apart from writing Skin Flick, also plays Alex, a lewd, recently fired cameraman who pushes the couple, Rollie and Daphne, to make the film.

“There are a couple of racy parts, but as long as you stay on this side of the line, then it’s OK.”

Foster initially started with a rich couple who suddenly lost all their money. But 10 pages in, he changed his mind.

“I thought … it would be funnier, and a little more meaningful, if these were ordinary folks who had no money and were trying to get by day to day,” he said.

“They’re just like you and me. They’re probably like your mom and dad.

“They’re just like people you see on the street every day and I’m sure that the audience … will recognize somebody onstage that they know, and maybe (see) themselves.”

Jamie Williams would agree. Williams plays Byron, Alex’s bookie who is talked into starring in their film. Awkward and shy, the character is more of an average Joe than a porn star.

“The whole play is naughty but nice … Even though we’re talking about a porno, it’s more of a love story,” he said.

“I really liked the improbability of the character becoming involved in porn. I like the journey he goes through to fulfill his obligations. He’s very honest, he’s upfront about everything.”

Walter Learning, the play’s director, likes this, too. Learning has been directing since 1968. And he knows his comedies.

Skin Flick “is very funny and people love to laugh. (Someone) used to say laughter is God’s medicine. If that’s the case, then Norm Foster is one of the most successful dispensing chemists,” Learning said.

The director, who has toured with the play across Canada, is confident that Sudbury will get the point.

“It’s been enjoyed in Halifax, in Port Dover, in Orangeville, because we all share a sort of common humanity, a common sense of value. That’s the wonderful thing about theatre,” he said.

While directing, Learning was careful to stay true to Foster’s script, which means there’s no nudity in the play.

“You could be pushing something too far. That takes people away,” he said. “There was a production that we had nothing to do with that had some nudity. That was absolutely inappropriate.”

While the director is looking forward to Skin Flick’s premier in Sudbury, he admits it’ll be a bittersweet moment.

“There’s a common feeling a day after the show opens. There is a sense … almost as if one of your children grew up and left home,” he said. “Suddenly your children have grown up and you have no role. You’re finished.”