Alumni are the National Theatre School’s greatest natural resource and its finest cultural asset. They are the connecting thread between the School and the artistic profession.
NTS alumni can be found primarily in Canada, but they also live and work in the USA, Mexico, Switzerland, Belgium, France and Japan.
Here’s a chance get to know them, one at a time.
Yvan HABEL (Production, 1979)
Q. You are originally a Montrealer; what brought you to Vancouver?
A. Green Thumb Theatre! I had worked in a number of theatres throughout eastern Canada after graduating from the NTS, including working for three seasons as Director of Planning and Education at the Stratford Festival. At that point, however, I felt that I wanted to make a major shift in my life and was planning to leave the business altogether. It was then that Green Thumb Theatre offered me the opportunity to come to Vancouver head up the administration of the theatre. So while it meant that I would remain in the business, moving to the west coast was definitely the major shift I was looking for!
Q. What would you have done if you hadn’t been approached by Green Thumb Theatre?
A. I was actually thinking of going back to school. I was contemplating law school!
Q. What aspects of your job do you most enjoy?
I enjoy working with all the staff on planning both the upcoming season and the long-term vision for the company. We work in a solid team environment and, as a result, people are free with their views; that freedom helps the company formulate very strong directions for itself. In the end though what brings the most enjoyment are the shows. Most of the work we do is new and newly commissioned. It’s enjoyable watching a piece grow from an idea into a full production. We’re also fortunate in having Patrick McDonald as our Artistic Director, as I think he is an exceptional dramaturge/director with playwright and script. His clarity adds to the excitement of watching a new play come to full life. His ability to work with both new and experienced playwrights and his care and patience with the many young actors we work with are unparalleled in my experience.
Q. What aspect of your training at the NTS did you find most useful when you began your career?
A. I think it’s the fact that all aspects are covered at the School. Being at the NTS is like being in a company; this gives students a real taste of how the industry works. Because the NTS is a specialists’ school, everyone concentrates on their specialty, but there’s interaction and engagement between the sections. This constant interaction enables students to get a complete idea of how to produce a work and gain an understanding of all of the components of theatre.
Q. What advice would you give to someone starting out in today’s market?
A. There’s definitely an active demand out there. If you’re in it for the love of theatre, you can do something you really enjoy and make a pretty good living out of it. Keep an eye out for opportunities for technical direction and production management, because there’s a real need for qualified people.
Q. Finish this sentence: “If I’d known then what I know now…”
I would have stuck with university or better yet entered an abbey! It would also be nice to not be on the “Freedom 135 plan,” but you can’t have everything (and retirement is highly overrated … isn’t it?). Seriously though, I think I wouldn’t have changed anything. I’ve traveled the world and worked in every major city in the country, so what’s not to like about that?
Yvan Habel is the General Manager of the Green Thumb Theatre Company, Vancouver, B.C.
He was interviewed in March 2009.
Diane D'AQUILA (Acting, 1972)
Q. What are you working on right now?
A. I’m working on the Shakespeare Project with the 2nd year Acting students. We’re doing Henry
VI, Parts I, II and III, which were the first three plays that Shakespeare wrote; I’ve condensed them into one evening. Hopefully, we’ll come in at under three hours, with two intermissions.
Every time you cut Shakespeare, you learn more and more about it. His first plays are very muscular, sexy and live in the land of swashbuckle with just a hint of melodrama lurking in the background. And when you cut it, the swashbuckle aspect of the plays comes even more to the fold. There are 19 fights in this production and every actor participates. The hardest thing for the actor to do in playing Shakespeare is to get on your voice, say what you mean, think at the same time and breathe what you’re thinking, getting it all together. The energy of the swashbuckle is good, it helps them find it.
If they, the actors and crew, embrace Shakespeare and love him with as much passion as I do, than I ’ve accomplished something.
Q. What did it feel like to return to the NTS?
A. Well, I graduated in 1972 and last year was the first time I’d been back, to direct Richard
III. When I walked into the Pauline McGibbon Studio, after 30 years, memories came flooding back and I broke into tears. It’s fantastic coming back, I just love this room. However, back in our day, we didn’t have a whole team behind us: we brought in our own props and costumes…there was maybe something that looked vaguely like a set… a chair and a table, we used the natural light… I was amazed when I saw everything we had to play with. I asked for scaffolding and I got scaffolding!
Q. What is your favourite thing about your profession?
A. My favourite part of acting is the rehearsal process, not to say that I don’t enjoy sharing it with an audience. But the digging and exploring beforehand is wonderful. I like the Sherlock Holmes approach to theatre, a good play will tell you what to do, all the clues are there. The difficult part is doing it, making it effortless and believable to the audience. The French have it right – répétition – the more you do it, the more you learn.
And if you hang in, you get better. Us old dogs, we get better just by the fact that we’ve been doing it for so long. With age comes wisdom, and that can only make you a better actor. I’m not afraid of making my weaknesses my strengths and making my strengths, my weaknesses. I couldn’t have done that in my youth, I wouldn’t have known what it meant.
Right now, though, I love directing! It ’s so easy in this business to become complacent. It’s easy to fall into habits, become lazy. I like challenge, I like going into the unknown and I don’t ever want to stop doing that. Sometimes, the opportunities to experience those challenges are harder to find in acting, which is why I’m so much more excited about directing these days.
Q. What advice would you give young actors starting out?
A. You can’t just say to someone “believe in yourself,” because it won’t automatically make them confident. But what I can say to someone is that when you make your choices in a play, commit to them 100% and play them to the fullest. They may be the wrong choices – so be it. Hopefully a good director will tell you and get you back on line. But I have learned more from my failures as an actor than I have from my successes. So, I would say commit to the work ethic and through that, your confidence will build and will grow.
Q. What aspect of your training at the NTS did you find most useful when you left the School?
A. I arrived at the NTS during a very tumultuous period: in 1969 there
was the Vietnam War, the FLQ crisis, changes at the School… My class was
small because a lot of actors left before the end of the three years. But,
I got a very good solid foundation at the NTS, only I didn’t know it at
the time. Remember, I was only 19 and at that age, you think you know everything.
Most importantly, what existed then and still exists now is the fact the
NTS opens doors.
Q. What would you have done if you hadn’t become an actress?
A. I can’t image what I would’ve done! I always joked that I would’ve liked to become a veterinarian. Although I wasn’t strong enough in math and sciences so I don’t think that would’ve worked. If you could be paid to be a Girl Scout den mother, I would’ve been good at that, I think. Herding people around, giving them what they need. Which is not unlike directing theatre: you have to know when to say something, how to be patient when giving a note to an actor so that it will register.
Certainly, my most successful job has been as a mother to my two children, who are currently in university. I feel I’ve done a better job at that than anything else I’ve done in my life.
Q. “If I’d known then what I know now…”
A. I’d like to say that I would have done things differently - better - but acting is something I had wanted to do since I was 9, so I suspect this is it. I have no regrets.
Diane D'Aquila was interviewed in May 2009.
Claudia DEY (Playwriting, 1997)
Q. What projects are you currently working on?
A. Right now, I’m writing a non-fiction book, which is a departure
for me. It’s part of a two-book contract I signed with HarperCollins
this past winter. I’m in a non-fiction frame of mind - the perfect
antidote after having written a novel. The novel demands you be sequestered
in solitude; it’s hungry and exacting. Whereas this non-fiction book
is a book for men, about sex, full of jokes; writing it is like watching
Chaplin movies – with the necessary accretion of facts and tips.
It is the outcome of a column I wrote for TORO magazine for nearly five
years. My next novel is making some kind of subterranean appearances and
I’m recording the small details as they arrive. A third project is
a screenplay/adaptation of my play Trout Stanley.
Q. You’ve been writing a weekly advice column in the Globe and Mail; where does all your wisdom come from?
A. Thank you. I think experience and observation - as well as the act
of paying attention and being moved by what you’ve beheld - is the
best teacher. I try to write from a place of consummate empathy. When I
was growing up, I felt like a confessional, a secret-keeper; people would
come to me and confide and look for direction. I guess I had a lot of practice
from an early age. However, I’ve just resigned from the Globe and
Mail, after two years and nearly 90 columns.
Q. You mentioned that your next novel is making “subterranean appearances,” can you talk a bit about your process?
A. Usually, it begins with an image and, thereafter, I start to take
notes quite furiously – on nearby receipts, in the middle of the
night, while driving. I remember John Murrell – when I was studying
with One Yellow Rabbit and attending the PlayRites Colony – saying:
when a new story presents itself, it rages through you like an infection.
The only cure is to write it. So I take down the often surreal, non-sensical
notes as they come; those notes start to take the shape of discernible
prose and that prose, through meticulous editorial work, becomes the
novel. It can be many years in the making. I tend to think long and write
fast.
Q. Is it difficult to let go once the novel is finished and sent
to the publisher’s?
A. Yes, there’s a kind of melancholia because you’ve existed
in such a clearly defined, constantly sharpening world with these characters
who are, frankly, as real to you as the other people in your life. If these
characters walked into the room, you’d know exactly how they’d
move, what drink they would order, who would sidle up against the wall,
and who would be dancing. When they are snapped up and sewn into the finished
book, you miss them terribly. Returning to living is an awkward act of
assimilation – like you’re suddenly a tourist or amphibian.
Or you’ve been in space and must re-enter the atmosphere and people
clamour around you, the astronaut, and ask: so what was it like? Is there
water on Mars? It’s lonely and solitary and disorienting. A writer
compulsively needs to live inside that creative universe. It is very much
alive in them and makes them awake. The insight I have now is that in future,
it’s really important, when you are finishing a project, to have
another one burgeoning just behind it so that you’re never quite
left in that liminal state.
Q. Where do you do your writing, is there a special place you
like to go to?
A. Indeed, and I’m in it right now! It’s the attic of our
house. The former occupant, a Buddhist illustrator put in these beautiful
skylights and created a sublime space. There’s a huge wall covered
with paintings by my son (three year-old Dove) and images of my sultry
heroes: Gwendolyn MacEwen, Patty Smith, David Bowie, and Serge Gainsbourg.
And I look out onto our roof-top deck which is currently being planted
with kale, carrots, basil and possibly a pumpkin by my part-time farmer
husband. I spend a lot of time here.
Q. What would you like to write about that you haven’t already
explored?
A. I re-visit a lot of the same themes. My curiosities don’t actually
shift that much, but are just expressed in different ways. For instance,
I’m fascinated by the sense of belonging; how do we define ourselves
when all of the markers of identity vanish? Right now, I’m also fascinated
by a kind of Twelfth Night androgyny. I’m always curious about relationships
and the complexities of love. I don’t know how much of my hunger
is for new questions or for old questions that I’m answering differently.
I ’ll know more in a few years - once I finish this novel.
Q. Did you always know that you wanted to be a writer?
A. Yes. I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. I used
to make little books when I was a girl and I had a million journals. I
would use whatever scraps of paper I could find to take notes and record
thoughts. It was like a navigational tool. Nothing has changed.
Q. What brought you to the NTS?
A. A convergence of three passions: writing, the theatre and Montreal.
I had studied at McGill University before applying to the National Theatre
School. I remember that I was in White River, Ontario, in a motel room,
getting ready to cook for a tree-planting contract, when I got the news that I ’d gotten into the School. And I was thrilled, of course.
Q. What aspects of your training at the NTS have served
you best during your career so far?
A. I believe it was the constant, constant practice. The constant doing.
Like a carpenter, a medical student, a pastry chef, it is about the hours
you spend in the wild of your training. What I loved so much about the
structure of our program was that it was like this barrage of offerings:
art history, theatre history, etc. We had countless ways of entering
the work: from biography to mask work to tai-chi. I loved the multiplicity
of inspirations and through that, being given the space and charged with
the discipline to construct our own processes; this is a pivotal discovery
for a writer. I developed my voice at the NTS. I also had players and
production teams there to support the presentation of that voice; this
was enormously instructive. To have someone like Jackie Maxwell direct
my first play was, as an educational tool and thrill, the equivalent
of ten years of uninterrupted writing.
I also loved the energy in the halls, being there until midnight, the intensity of the work, the intensity of the expectations, I loved how much we were asked to read, how impossible our tasks seemed. I loved the standard of excellence. The dare of it all.
Q. How did you find the transitional period after you graduated
from the NTS?
A. It was a huge adjustment. What I ended up doing was extending that
sense of community. Morwyn Brebner (Playwriting, 1996), one of my closest
friends, was in Toronto at the time, so I just called her and said “Okay,
what do I do now?!” We rode around on bicycles and went to pubs and
she gave me guidance and she continues to be that invaluable hybrid: the
peer-mentor. I was also invited into another kind of community, the Factory
Theatre, which proved to be completely formative. Preceding that, I had
a short play – it first premiered at the exercise d’ensemble – accepted
at the Rhubarb Festival. This felt like the moon landing. Then I was part
of the Factory Theatre’s Lab for emerging writers and ended up being
their playwright in residence for many years; they even gave me an office
with the kind of swinging door you find in barns – this seemed appropriate.
Q. What would you have done if you hadn’t become a writer?
A. If I hadn’t become a writer, I’d be living in a cardboard
box under a bridge! I cannot imagine having become anything else. I might
have gone into the performing arts – perhaps playing music. In fact,
my husband is teaching me to play the drums right now for a girl band I’ve
been invited to join. But, really, it’s an impossible consideration.
I can’t imagine another life.
Q. Please complete this thought: “If I’d known then
what I know now…”
A. I would change nothing.
Claudia Dey was interviewed in June 2009.
Brendan HEALY (Directing, 2005)
Q. What lessons did you learn at the NTS that continue to nurture your artistic process today?
A. The School taught me a couple of important things. On the one hand, it taught me to be very true to myself in terms of a vision, to stick to that vision and be very articulate, clear and perseverant about it. And at the same time, it exposed me to new ideas and challenged me to go beyond what I initially thought was the right choice. I was encouraged to remain flexible in terms of approaches, to stretch myself stylistically.
Q. When did you decide to move from acting towards directing?
A. I had actually done some directing at university, which my teachers encouraged me to pursue; I guess they knew something that I didn’t, at the time! But it took about a year of working as a professional actor for me to realize that acting wasn’t my path.
I was acting in a show in Montreal; it was entitled Girls! Girls! Girls!, written by Greg MacArthur and directed by Peter Hinton, and presented as part of the FTA. There, I met a theatre company called the New York City Players. A friendship began and I eventually moved to New York to intern with them. I think that’s when I made the decision to direct. I returned to Canada and moved to Toronto, and haven’t acted since.
Q. Do you miss it?
A. No! Not at all!
Q. However, it must give you deeper insight when directing actors?
A. Yes, but as time goes on, I’m losing my “actor connection” and feel like it’s time for me to take an acting class just to remember what it feels like to be on stage. But yes, when I initially started directing, I definitely directed from an actor’s perspective, although less so now.
Q. What do you enjoy most about directing?
A. I think that what I love about directing is what I love about theatre, which is the collaborative aspect of it. I enjoy the collective experience and effort to realize a text, to penetrate and understand it. I like the collective endeavour of creating poetry on stage. I also like being in the middle of the action, being the one who’s looking at the lights and the sound and the acting and watching it all come together with the set and the costumes. I’m not responsible for “one” thing, I’m responsible for everybody else’s responsibilities. I love that aspect of it, it’s very exciting.
Q. Is there a show that you dream of directing?
A. I don’t know if I have “a” dream show…I have, perhaps, a dream process that would make the many shows I would like to direct all the more dreamlike.
And that process would be one where I’d be working with a company of actors whom I know very well. Ideally, we would have a long history together and we would work on shows for extended periods of time. It would also be a process where an audience could encounter our work at various stages; an on-going dialogue with the audience. The work would somehow always be in evolution and the audience would meet it at whatever juncture we were at when we decide to share it. I also imagine this dream process to be in the countryside somewhere, where life and theatre-making are somehow intertwined and it’s an environment where people’s lives are very much connected to the experience of art-making. It’s an old-fashioned vision of an acting company (such as the one depicted by Mnouchkine in the film, Molière) where the artists have a real commitment to each other as people as well as a commitment to making theatre together. That, to me, seems very dreamlike.
Q. What advice would you give someone just starting their career in theatre?
A. I don’t have any original advice to give, but I will pass on something that Robert Lepage said that really resonated for me. When I was a student at the National Theatre School, Lepage was given the Gascon-Thomas Award. In his acceptance speech, he told the students to not worry about being good, but to worry about being unique. I found that to be so liberating: don’t worry so much about whether you’re good enough and just stay true to your own interests and artistic impulses, and have the blind faith that eventually someone will share that interest. And I can say that that has certainly been the case for me – it’s taken a long time – but it certainly has happened.
Q. Do you think that young artists put undue pressure on themselves to “succeed” and don’t give themselves the time to mature and perfect their craft?
A. I think our culture puts a lot of pressure on us that way: we’re presented with a very specific model of success that isn’t reflected in our reality as theatre artists. Graduating school is not an ending; it’s really just the beginning.
A commitment to the theatre is, I think, a lifelong commitment. It’s impossible to say, “Okay, that show is finished, it’s the perfect show and now I’ll move on.” It’s never finished. You could easily spend your life doing the same show every few years, because there’s always something to learn and that’s the gift of the theatre. And it’s a hard lesson to learn, because we expect results in our culture and we really evaluate our self-worth by a kind of economic and social position that the life of an artist doesn’t give you. There are other ways to measure your success and part of the life lesson is learning how to measure success for yourself.
Samuel Beckett wrote: “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” I think that’s such a great way of talking about the process of theatre and the process of living too, since it releases you from all the pre-conceived notions of success – whatever that means – and releases your ego from needing to be defined by something outside of yourself.
If you just assume that you’re going to fail, I think your life will be more pleasant!
Q. If you hadn’t gone into theatre, what do you think you would’ve done?
A. My dirty secret is that I went to McGill Law School for a year and a half, during the time I was acting professionally. But I dropped out, because it really did not feel right for me. However, I guess if I weren’t directing, I would have somehow found a way to make a career in law work for me.
Q. Please complete this thought: “If I’d known then what I know now…”
A. I probably would have spent less time worrying about what I thought other people wanted me to be and would have spent more time just being myself. That would apply equally to my professional and personal life.
Brendan Healy returned to the NTS this fall to direct the 3rd year Acting students’ production of Liliom, by Ferenc Molnar. The show was presented at the Monument-National from October 20 to 24, 2009.
Brendan is Artistic Director of Buddies in Bad Times Theatre (Toronto) and the 2009 recipient of the Pauline McGibbon Award, presented by the Ontario Ministry of Culture to a theatre professional who displays a unique talent and a potential for excellence.
Brendan Healy was interviewed on October 13, 2009.
William SCHMUCK (Set and Costume Design, 1980)
Q. How long have you worked at the Shaw Festival?
A. I arrived at the Festival in 1993 as a freelance designer, my first production was Gentlemen Prefer Blondes; I became Design Director in 1996.
Q. On what projects are you currently working?
A. I am designing the set and costumes for The Women, by Clare Booth Luce, directed by Alisa Palmer, which opens May 12. The set is built and is being painted; I’m just about to start shopping for fabric and the cutters have started their work. The other show I’m working on is John Bull’s Other Island, by George Bernard Shaw, directed by Christopher Newton. The set is currently being built and this show opens on June 18.
On an administrative level, I am part of a team that meets regularly to look at the state of the Shaw Festival today, the direction we want to move in, the philosophical changes we want to make. We’re also planning for the 50th anniversary next season.
Q. What is your favourite aspect of your work?
A. I think it’s the variety of it all. As a designer, you are often in situations where you are asked to repeat past successes. The administrative side allows me to avoid that, so there are always opportunities to keep learning. I love the freedom of it.
Q. Are there any aspects that you enjoy less?
A. I suppose that model-making has become more challenging over the years. When you start out as a young designer, you make a lot of them. As you become older, you don’t have as much manual dexterity or patience, so that is something that I’m happy to delegate. I still do some model-making on my own, but it’s not my favourite part of the process.
Q. What led you to a career in stage design?
A. I’m one of those rare people who knew what type of work they wanted to do at an early age. I grew up in Kitchener/Waterloo and we had lots of school trips to the Stratford Festival. As a teenager, I continued to go on my own. I realized then that there was a world of employment in that field.
Q. Were you active in theatre at the time?
A. I acted in high school and amateur productions. There was a company called KW Musical Productions and we were fortunate enough to have Alan Lund (director and choreographer at the Charlottetown Festival, in PEI) working there, so I got involved in musicals.
I enjoyed acting, but I realized that what I really enjoyed was the process leading up to the show, so that by opening night, the fun was over and I was ready to move on to other things.
However, that experience has helped me in my designing: I can relate differently to actors, I can imagine myself walking through the space, wearing a costume, etc.
Q. What brought you specifically to the NTS?
A. During high school, I was always researching schools. I liked that the NTS offered conservatory-type training and seemed focused on what I wanted to get out of my education. And I liked the idea that it was in Quebec and that the French culture was part of it. I took French all through high school just in case I went there. I ended up being the only Anglophone in my class!
I really feel lucky, in a way, although it was very hard for me at the time. The French factor was a very rich part of my education. I feel that it’s such a great thing that I can pick up a French newspaper or watch French television and know what’s going on.
Q. What did you learn at NTS that continues to influence your work today?
A. François Barbeau was the Director of the Design Program at the time and he taught me everything I know. He was very generous to me and made me realize that as an artist, you have to approach every project by making yourself happy. You have to express yourself in each thing you do. Even if you’re struggling with the director, you have to make your statement. This has given me a great deal of confidence.
When I read a play, I can see it very quickly and I know how I want to move forward; I get that from him, from his approach. I can talk about the play in a larger way, outside of design even, that engages the director. You can keep up a livelier conversation about new ways of doing the play; you can move through the nuts and bolts very quickly and get to what is going to be great about your production.
I tell young students that it’s always good to come to your first meeting with a developed idea. Because if they hate it, you’ll have had your chance to express the idea and they’ll know exactly where your mind is at so that they can get you onto their side. Or, chances are they’ll love it. It’s much better to come with something, to have something for the director to bounce off of, rather than coming with nothing. So that’s an extension of what I was taught by Barbeau.
Q. What other advice would you give to young designers?
A. When actors graduate from theatre schools, they can get jobs right away, because there are roles for 22-year-olds. However, not too many people will hire a 22-year-old designer because they don’t necessarily have the life experience that they would need to be designing costumes for 40 years olds.
So, you have to work in other areas of design before you get to be a designer. It’s always good to develop one of your skills, whether you’re a painter or a draftsman, because that gets you into the bigger theatres, where you can learn more quickly than you can by struggling on your own.
When I was being trained in my theatre career, you had to pick a stream, like design in my case, and you were very much encouraged to be in that stream and learn everything there was to learn about it. Nowadays, I think there’s a lot more cross-over. No one would think twice about somebody who wanted to design, direct, write, and perform. It would be preferable, I think, to go into a world where you could move between the disciplines. It was scary graduating when I did because there weren’t even that many independent projects. You had to go to a theatre that was established and work your way up.
Q. Are there shows that you dream of designing?
A. I love classical theatre, the big war-horse plays. I have a preference for Chekov and Tennessee Williams, and I’ve designed a lot for musical theatre. So I guess I would say the big classic pieces of the 20th century are what interest me the most.
Q. Finish this sentence: “If I knew then what I know now…”
A….I would not have limited myself to a design career alone. Although I love what I do, I would have continued and developed in the acting and directing stream. Designers are lucky that they have such strong visual imaginations and memory. If these skills were applied to directing, I am sure we would have a generation of directors who are freer and more diverse in their approach to what is possible in producing plays. Most directors are trained as actors so their ideas are often exclusively text based. This is valid, but the theatre is equally a visual medium and sometimes developing imagery is left unexplored for the immediacy of language. Learning the language of acting when talking to an actor to give really useful information about how they can use my design, has taken my whole career. If we don’t separate the training of designers from the training of actors, both disciplines would be less mysterious to each other. I think this is happening now more and more.
William Schmuck was interviewed on February 26, 2010. (photo credit: Shaw Festival)