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Shaun Smyth’s life and career are coming full circle.
Last year, the actor, director and playwright moved back to Calgary with his wife and daughters after spending almost three decades in Ontario. With the opening of Alberta Theatre Projects’ The Seafarer on Oct. 15, Smyth will return to the Martha Cohen stage where he performed 29 years ago, having just graduated from the University of Alberta’s theatre program.
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“I have quite a history with Alberta Theatre Projects, and some incredible memories,” says Smyth, who has starred in more than a dozen plays for ATP, including the 2012 world premiere of Kirstie McLellan Day’s The Theo Fleury Story: Playing With Fire. Smyth would tour Playing With Fire to a dozen theatres, earning accolades and awards wherever he touched down.
In 1996, Smyth starred in the Canadian Stage Company’s North American premiere of Trainspotting, the show Smyth says “opened up the doors for me in Toronto, one of the hardest markets to break into. It helped get me on stage, and into film.” Ironically, Trainspotting brought Smyth back to his Scottish roots. He was born in Glasgow, and his family immigrated to Canada when Smyth was three.
“My father had this romantic vision of Canada. We landed in Winnipeg and had several options of where to settle, including Calgary and Vancouver. When my father heard there were cowboys in Calgary, Vancouver suddenly became a distant choice. My dad embraced the cowboy culture. He wore cowboy hats and took us horseback riding,” says Smyth, who graduated from Bishop Carroll High School.
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The Seafarer launches ATP’s 50th anniversary season and stars Paul Gross, who, like Smyth, is returning to a Calgary stage.
“Our paths never crossed. When I arrived in Toronto, Paul was in his film and television trajectory, but, like most actors, I was very well aware of where he sat on the scale of things. When I was cast in The Seafarer, I sent Paul an email, telling him how much I was looking forward to working with him.”
Smyth finally met Gross, not in the Arts Commons rehearsal hall, but in the hallway.
“He’d misplaced his pass to the rehearsal hall, and was muttering away at the door, so I got to let him in. I admit I was nervous at the prospect of working with Paul. You keep wondering how things are going to roll. What is he going to want? It took just a few minutes to realize he’s like an old pair of jeans. It’s such a comfortable fit.”
Smyth adds “Paul is not demanding in the least, and he has tons of stories and is a born storyteller. He’s also a bit silly and likes to have fun, so the rehearsals have been a joy. For so many years, and on so many of the projects he helmed, Paul carried a lot of responsibility. He says he feels a kind of peace when he’s in Calgary, and that he loves the landscape and the sky.”
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Haysam Kadri, ATP’s artistic director, says Gross “is a bonified film and TV star, but, at heart, he’s a stage actor. Best of all, he is the humblest star you could ask for, and there is nothing he wouldn’t do to help promote the play and the theatre. He said I could put him in a sandwich board and he’d walk up and down the streets if I thought it would help sell tickets.”
Gross’s name above the marquee at ATP is working the magic that Kadri hoped for. The main section of the theatre is 80 per cent sold out for the first two weeks of the run, and the company is enjoying its biggest season ticket response in more than 13 years.
Conor McPherson’s The Seafarer is a dark comedy about a card game where the stakes are one player’s soul, and Gross plays the stranger who might just be the devil in disguise.
Gross and Smyth share the stage with fellow Calgary actors Christopher Hunt, Chirag Naik and David Trimble under the direction of stage and film director Peter Pasyk.
The Seafarer runs in the Martha Cohen Theatre from Oct. 15 to Nov. 10.
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