In this case, it’s probably a good thing that Stallone never got to play his dream role—somehow I doubt Edgar Allan Poe spent a lot of time on the Nautilus machine. But what about Edmonton actors? Surely, we at SEE wondered, there must be roles they’ve always coveted, but which they’ve never been given the chance to play.
And so we asked a cross-section of local performers to name those parts they long for—the scripts they place under their pillow when they sleep, the roles they’re thinking of when they pray to the theatre gods. Or at least the parts with lots of juicy speeches.
Here’s a selection of the responses we received. Artistic directors, are you taking notes?
Jan Alexandra Smith
(Recent roles: Maggie the Cat in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Elena in Vanya)
“It’s funny—right now, I’m playing a teapot in Beauty and the Beast, and a bunch of the girls were talking backstage about this very thing. And I said that more than anything, I want to play Rosalind in As You Like It. I’ve played her before with the Free Will Players, but I would love to do it one more time before I’m just too old to get away with it. I love the way she teaches a guy how to really get the girl—if only we all had the opportunity to do that! And she has so many qualities that I admire as well. She’s vulnerable—she’s frightened when she’s thrust out into the world on her own—but she still pulls herself up by her own bootstraps and finds her way.”
James Hamilton
(Recent roles: Spig in Diamond Dog, King Ethelred in Silence, Matthew D. Melody in Crazy Gary’s Mobile Disco)
“Typically I find myself cast as the whimpering simp, which I love. I think that one of greatest scheming, panicky cowards ever created is Shelley ‘The Machine’ Levene from Glengarry Glen Ross. It’s always been a dream to play him someday. In saying that, I should say that I’ve always had a soft spot for the badasses too, I would literally kill to play Harry Roat from Wait Until Dark. I mean it. I would kill.”
Clarice Eckford
(Recent roles: Vicki in The Velvet Shock, Susan in Kingfisher Days)
“My ‘dream role’ has always been Ophelia in Hamlet. When she comes in, singing mad little songs, handing out flowers and herbs, the goal is to prevent the audience and fellow actors from thinking, ‘Oh yeah, this is the part where Ophelia goes nuts and drowns herself.’ Instead, the room should be disturbed and saddened; there should be a realization that the trickery constructed by Hamlet et al. has caused the mental breakdown of a somewhat innocent bystander. And to share the stage with a wild and handsome Hamlet would be exciting.”
Clinton Carew
(Recent roles: Mr. Lawrence, Girl in the Goldfish Bowl, Old Uncle in The Black Rider)
“I’ve always wanted to be one of the cats in a touring production of Cats somewhere in the Midwest. Not any of the named roles, just one of the ones whose main job is to slink through the audience as the show opens wearing glow-in-the-dark contact lenses. In my dreams, this is a bit like Showgirls and a bit like All That Jazz, and probably not much like Cats. But anyhow, all of the other cats are secretly envious of my purr but I can find contentment anyhow as I settle down into a human-sized cat bed in the touring van. When, on opening night, Mungojerrie is arrested for soliciting a police officer by rubbing his butt up against him in the coatroom, I spring into action, but instantly forget all the words to all the songs. It is around this time that I realize that cats don’t wear pants.”
Coralie Cairns
(Recent roles: Alice in Sexy Laundry, Peggy in While My Mother Lay Dreaming)
“Off the top of my head, I would have loved to have played Hedda Gabler. I’d also love to play Mary in Long Day’s Journey Into Night, or Linda, the wife in Death of a Salesman, and at some point, Hagar in The Stone Angel. I would like to do Martha again in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? These women are all complex, conflicted, flawed, and they fight fiercely for what they need. To research these roles—to mine for all that information and to live in the worlds they struggle to survive in, to have their words and thought processes and make them mine would be bliss. Martha and George’s dialogue in Virginia Woolf is just breathtaking—when she finds her target, she leaves no prisoners. As Nick tells her, ‘There’s no limit to you.’”
Tracey Power
(Recent roles: Mary Pickford in Living Shadows: A Story of Mary Pickford, Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream)
“I’ve been playing a lot of ‘adorable yet feisty’ lately, so I’m ready for a little villainess activity. What play and part that is I’m not sure; maybe it’s about to be written. I would also love to dive into a Naomi Wallace play—One Flea Spare and The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek both have wonderfully real young woman parts that have more than enough quirkiness to drool over. So maybe if I’m a good girl, Santa or some director in a red suit will send one of those roles my way.”
Nathan Cuckow
(Recent roles: Feminem in Bash’d, various characters in Monster)
“I’m not really sure what my ‘dream role’ would be. When I was a teenager I always wanted to play Tom in The Glass Menagerie and I did that, and performing Daniel MacIvor’s one-man show Monster was certainly a dream. Now I don’t really know. Does this mean I should retire?
“I will say that creating my own work has probably been most rewarding. It allows me the freedom to explore whatever type of role I feel inspired by at the time—low status. high status, whatever. I would love to collaborate with Daniel MacIvor on a new work, or to be cast in a new Stewart Lemoine play. He always creates such interesting characters. (I played one half of a pair of Siamese twins in Two Tall, Too Thin, as well as Xhan Xiu, Princess of the Eastern Isles, in The Hothouse Prince.)
“I’m not really sure outside of that. Am I supposed to say Hamlet? Well, sure. That would be fun. But I don’t really dream about it.”
John Wright
(Recent roles: Leontes in The Winter’s Tale, Scrooge in A Christmas Carol)
“I would like to play Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman because I’m the right age and it’s one of the greatest roles in the theatre. Also King Lear, because I love doing Shakespeare. These don’t fall that far from my usual curmudgeon roles but they have scope well beyond just being cranky old farts. I’d love to do any whimsical, comedic roles à la Stewart Lemoine. And I do believe I would make a great Annie with a real twist—directed by Jeff Page, of course. Sandy would never the same. Arf!”
