An interview with Shakespearean actor Gareth Potter of the Stratford Festival Of Canada during his 2007 Season. The 2008 Season will welcome Gareth playing the coveted role of Romeo in Romeo & Juliet.

The New Generation Of Shakespeare….

By: Kindah Mardam Bey

‘All the worlds a stage, and its men and women merely players….'

Shakespeare wrote in As You Like It, but it is the stage where Shakespeare survives, thrives and perpetually rejuvenates from a life source of new and talented young actors with their sights set on some of the pithiest roles ever shaped for the stage. So meet Gareth Potter, in his fourth season at North America’s pre-eminent Shakespearean foreground, The Stratford Festival of Canada, Potter has managed to carve out his own way in the Canadian kingdom of the Bard. Amidst a full cast of Merchant Of Venice and King Lear, Potter was easy to spot as an emerging young talent of the Shakespearean persuasion, but it is statements like ‘you have to let the text of Shakespeare well from your soul’ and ‘contemporary plays terrify me, it feels too wide open, with Shakespeare the text does all the work for you,’ said without an ounce of pretence that let’s you know that Potter was born with Shakespeare in his psyche.

Well perhaps his gene pool at very least, being of British and Welsh lineage Potter went through the natural osmosis of learning Shakespeare when he was born, I know this is gospel because I too had that indoctrination at birth (kids of Brits also learn all the lyrics to The Beatles songs at birth, whether we want to or not!). However, simply being born from a British parent does not make one comprehend Shakespeare. No, after birth the spark must be ignited in you, and for Gareth Potter that was at the age of fourteen when he read The Merchant Of Venice at school and learned the Gratiano speech in the final act. Gratiano’s speech has got Potter through many an audition, and won over the Stratford Festival enough for Potter to gain his acceptance into the Birmingham Conservatory. Now Potter has come full circle playing Gratiano to Stratford audiences in this years’ production of The Merchant Of Venice across from Graham Greene’s Shylock.

Gareth Potter also comes full circle with performing in this years’ production of King Lear alongside theatre greats Brian Bedford as Lear and Scott Wentworth as Gloucester. Potter plays Edgar, Gloucester’s son, both a challenging role and a role with defined evolution. Each time Edgar sets foot into the play he has transformed himself a little worse for wear, or better depending where you are in the play. It was Christopher Plummer’s rendition of King Lear that Potter saw on a school trip that eventually made him work his way from his home province of Quebec to the Stratford stage less than a decade later. As evolution seems to be a key theme in Potter’s life, he may yet again come full circle as Plummer will perform next year at the Stratford Festival in Shaw’s version of Caesar and Cleopatra. On the very stage that Potter saw Plummer in Lear in 2002, he may very well grace five years later as a performer alongside his mentor.

In prep for the continuous metamorphosis of Edgar, Potter says he would do a lot of warm ups and different acting techniques to get into the role at the start of the season, but as he has settled in to the season more Potter refers to his transformation of Edgar as starting each evenings performance by taking the ‘stupid pill.’ Potter continues ‘Edgar is so naïve and gullible at the start of the play that now I really try to enter the stage as naïve as Edgar does. Edgar can be a challenge to perform, you have a feeling of freedom and yet neurosis at the same time. I try to let the text dictate my performance. Sometimes even seeing someone in the audience can change my performance. Just a little while ago I saw an old man in the audience…really, really old, and as I said the final lines from Edgar in Lear “The oldest hath borne most: we that are young. Shall never see so much, nor live so long.” I felt the connection of the text to that audience member and I said it right to the guy in the audience.’

A rather politely tall (over six foot) chap, Potter seems to have none of the actors stereotypical trappings; he has very little ego, very sweet-natured, and is unassuming. Potter has the same passion towards talking about Shakespeare as most people in Canada do to talking about hockey; hearing this I see that Potter’s natural enthusiasm for the subject is his greatest asset as an actor.

He tells me about studying at the Birmingham Conservatory, a prestigious and rather small sized educational program for first year actors to the Stratford Festival. Potter explains ‘the school is very regimented, and you are learning so much in a small amount of time, but you create this amazing bond with the others in your group and with the Festival. When I got into the Conservatory I tried to fail as much as possible, so I could learn from all my mistakes! A lot of the people from the first year of the Birmingham Conservatory are still performing at Stratford like Jonathon Goad (performing as Iago this year in Othello) and David Snelgrove (Lord Goring in An Ideal Husband and Antipholus of Syracuse in Comedy of Errors) and it is easy to see why when you have been trained so well by the Conservatory.’

Gareth Potter’s enthusiasm also comes across when speaking of his fellow cast members which he refers to with a hint of reverence. He says that Brian Bedford, being both director and the title role of King Lear this year, told his cast that ‘as you go through this text, you must find a way to be emotionally connected to every word,’ advice the young grasshopper seems to be heeding. Potter also speaks of Scott Wentworth who he works with intimately in King Lear, as Gareth plays Wentworth’s son in the role of Edgar ‘Scott is a chameleon as an actor; he is always changing it up every night. He also plays with the subtle nuances of text. Scott spoke to me one day on the word ‘will’ and all the possible meanings of that single word.’ Potter seems to be soaking up all the knowledge he can on the subject of acting, and from some formidable sensei’s.

One of the reasons Potter enjoys performing in The Stratford Festival is because it is a repertory company, ‘so you can do Lear or Merchant, but you can also be in An Ideal Husband, or go and see Pentecost.’ Gareth is also the understudy to Tom McCamus role of Sir Robert Chiltern this season in An Ideal Husband.

In his earlier years at the Festival, Gareth Potter decided he wanted to learn all the text to the 180 line poem The Rape Of Lucrece, which he did, and then attempted to make a performance out of it, which he did eventually turn into a one man show performed in Montreal ‘I wanted to do something in Shakespeare that was unexplored, that not many people perform, or talked about.’ Originally called The Ravishment, a narrative poem about the rape of Lucretia, an incident which eventually led to the foundation of the Roman Republic, actually seems to be an ideal one person performance piece. I ask Potter if he would like to play the piece on the Studio Theatre stage, the most intimate stage at the Stratford Festival and known for putting on progressive works, and works in relation to Shakespeare. Potter beams a smile with his response ‘I’d love to do that!’ This is that young talent with new ideas where Shakespeare lives today that I was mentioning earlier. After all, who self-motivates to learn the obscure epic poems of Shakespeare?

Potter seems to have an endless ‘shortlist’ of roles he would also like to play from Shakespeare’s list of characters; Hotspur (I’ll assume any version of him in the three histories this character is showcased in) seems to be his newest challenge but when I ask Potter where he’d like his career to be in a decade or two, at 28, Potter seems to give a run down of Shakespearean roles ‘hmmm, in a decade I want to be playing Macbeth, Richard II, Berowne and Benedick and Henry V. I really admire actors like Colm Feore and Peter Donaldson, who seem to go off and do film or TV and yet keep returning to the stage. So perhaps throw in a couple of great new Canadian movies I’d like to be in as well!’

A common problem regarding theatre seems to be audience attendance and particularly the lack of young audience members, so with such excitement towards theatre and sixteenth century theatre at that, I ask Potter about where he sees theatre is at this point in time ‘Well Stratford is really more of an international theatre, the best actors are here, and it’s really one of a kind, but I grew up in English speaking Quebec and see in Montreal a culture full of arts with vibrant French theatre, films, dance, comedy and art, with so much diversity, but also a lot of choices to pick from. English speaking theatre is pretty low on the list in Montreal, but we have a loyal and passionate community of theatre-goers. What I see in French theatre is that younger audiences are turning up more because the writing is new. A lot of new productions are being made that speaks to the people of Quebec.’

Listening to Gareth Potter on an unusually grey day in a beautiful oasis just behind the Festival theatre reminiscent of something out of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I think that Potter reminds me of the saying ‘chance favours those in motion.’ Potter seems to be constantly working at his craft, learning what he can, experimenting and recognizing that even when messing up something can be learned along the way. So it comes as no surprise to me that when I ask the best advice he’s been given he says sheepishly ‘balls out!’ (i.e.: meaning doing something with full effort). I have to smile thinking of how that might have also been a mantra for Shakespeare and his band of players; it appears to me that Shakespeare’s torch will be carried on for at least another generation.

__________________________________________

Richard Burton is the best Shakespearean actor of all time for Gareth Potter, his favourite book is My Side of The Mountain by Jean Craighead George (‘I must have read that a dozen times growing up!’ he tells me) and his favourite Shakespearean play is ‘King Lear for now.’

To see Gareth Potter in King Lear, Merchant of Venice, or to learn more about the Stratford Festival Of Canada go to The Stratford Festival at www.stratfordfestival.ca