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Shaun Smyth’s life and profession are coming full circle.
Final 12 months, the actor, director and playwright moved again to Calgary along with his spouse and daughters after spending virtually three many years in Ontario. With the opening of Alberta Theatre Initiatives’ The Seafarer on Oct. 15, Smyth will return to the Martha Cohen stage the place he carried out 29 years in the past, having simply graduated from the College of Alberta’s theatre program.
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“I’ve fairly a historical past with Alberta Theatre Initiatives, and a few unimaginable reminiscences,” says Smyth, who has starred in additional than a dozen performs for ATP, together with the 2012 world premiere of Kirstie McLellan Day’s The Theo Fleury Story: Enjoying With Fireplace. Smyth would tour Enjoying With Fireplace to a dozen theatres, incomes accolades and awards wherever he touched down.
In 1996, Smyth starred within the Canadian Stage Firm’s North American premiere of Trainspotting, the present Smyth says “opened up the doorways for me in Toronto, one of many hardest markets to interrupt into. It helped get me on stage, and into movie.” Paradoxically, Trainspotting introduced Smyth again to his Scottish roots. He was born in Glasgow, and his household immigrated to Canada when Smyth was three.
“My father had this romantic imaginative and prescient of Canada. We landed in Winnipeg and had a number of choices of the place to settle, together with Calgary and Vancouver. When my father heard there have been cowboys in Calgary, Vancouver abruptly turned a distant selection. My dad embraced the cowboy tradition. He wore cowboy hats and took us horseback driving,” says Smyth, who graduated from Bishop Carroll Excessive Faculty.
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The Seafarer launches ATP’s fiftieth anniversary season and stars Paul Gross, who, like Smyth, is returning to a Calgary stage.
“Our paths by no means crossed. Once I arrived in Toronto, Paul was in his movie and tv trajectory, however, like most actors, I used to be very effectively conscious of the place he sat on the size of issues. Once I was forged in The Seafarer, I despatched Paul an e mail, telling him how a lot I used to be trying ahead to working with him.”
Smyth lastly met Gross, not within the Arts Commons rehearsal corridor, however within the hallway.
“He’d misplaced his move to the rehearsal corridor, and was muttering away on the door, so I obtained to let him in. I admit I used to be nervous on the prospect of working with Paul. You retain questioning how issues are going to roll. What’s he going to need? It took just some minutes to understand he’s like an outdated pair of denims. It’s such a snug match.”
Smyth provides “Paul shouldn’t be demanding within the least, and he has tons of tales and is a born storyteller. He’s additionally a bit foolish and likes to have enjoyable, so the rehearsals have been a pleasure. For therefore a few years, and on so lots of the tasks he helmed, Paul carried plenty of duty. He says he feels a form of peace when he’s in Calgary, and that he loves the panorama and the sky.”
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Haysam Kadri, ATP’s creative director, says Gross “is a bonified movie and TV star, however, at coronary heart, he’s a stage actor. Better of all, he’s the humblest star you can ask for, and there’s nothing he wouldn’t do to assist promote the play and the theatre. He mentioned I might put him in a sandwich board and he’d stroll up and down the streets if I believed it might assist promote tickets.”
Gross’s title above the marquee at ATP is working the magic that Kadri hoped for. The principle part of the theatre is 80 per cent bought out for the primary two weeks of the run, and the corporate is having fun with its largest season ticket response in additional than 13 years.
Conor McPherson’s The Seafarer is a darkish comedy a couple of card recreation the place the stakes are one participant’s soul, and Gross performs the stranger who would possibly simply be the satan in disguise.
Gross and Smyth share the stage with fellow Calgary actors Christopher Hunt, Chirag Naik and David Trimble beneath the course of stage and movie director Peter Pasyk.
The Seafarer runs within the Martha Cohen Theatre from Oct. 15 to Nov. 10.
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