Sex, religion and politics -- all the subjects playwright and composer Debbie Patterson was taught were taboo come into play in Head: The Musical, the Shakespeare in the Ruins production opening at Assiniboine Park Conservatory tomorrow.

Patterson was just driving in her car minding her own business when Head was conceived. Libby Larson's Try Me Good King, based on a letter Boleyn wrote before her execution, played on the radio and sparked Patterson's interest in her plight.

"When I was listening to that music, I was thinking about being a mother and being forced to leave your child in a hostile world," she says. "The injustice of her situation is so extreme, and yet she died with such grace -- I mean when you read her speech from the scaffold it's quite heartbreaking."

Basically put to death for failing to give Henry a son and heir, Boleyn was tried on trumped-up charges of treasonous adultery and quickly executed -- it's sweet justice that her female child would succeed as Queen Elizabeth I.

Patterson says she was interested in the fact that with all her power and royal prestige, Boleyn was not immune to "her body's own failings." And she was interested in how she dealt with death -- and how we moderns deal with the inevitable, a concept that grew in importance when Patterson lost three loved ones while she was writing the play.

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