The National Arts Centre

My connection to the National Arts Centre in Ottawa began in the summer of 1975 with a summer long clown and circus workshop in a disused and unrenovated studio space on the backside of the building on Albert Street. This was the second summer clown and circus workshop I’d done in Ottawa. The first had been the previous summer in the theatre at University of Ottawa across the canal. 

Those two summer workshops were life changing in several ways but they weren’t paying gigs. 

My first paying gig at the NAC was in January of 1975 with the production of John Coulter’s Louis Riel. I had one speaking scene. I remembered my words. There was no furniture. I carried a musket. All the other scenes I was in were as rabble or soldier or spectator. That was true for all other cast members too. I think the only cast member who just played one role was the guy who played Riel and he didn’t really leave the stage. The production was touted at the time as the first production in the country to be played in both official languages. About half the cast were French speaking Quebecois. 

The first day of rehearsals was a kind of shock for me when I discovered that I was going to be working with some people that I had been watching on Canadian television since I was a kid. Star struck isn’t the right word really – more like gob smacked. 

The Canadian War Museum loaned all the weapons for the production. On the evening Pierre and Margaret Trudeau came to see the show there were plain clothes members of an RCMP security detail backstage to check every weapon before it was taken on stage. One of the Quebecois guys I got to know fairly well said it was because he and a couple of the other guys were known to be separatists.

The next time I played at The NAC was in the summer of 1975 only this time it was in the opera house. The NAC had a fairly generous federal government budget in those days and they used to run a festival of high culture in the summers. Operatic productions with name stars, symphony concerts with guest conductors and soloists, ballet companies from all over the world. That summer they produced Mozart’s Magic Flute. So what was I doing in it?

The guy who’d written the English translation, for reasons never explained and best known only to himself, wrote in speaking roles for 3 “slave boys”. See if you can imagine my svelte 26 year old self in café au lait full body makeup and a costume that would have not have been out of place in a gay brothel in Khartoum. 

It worked out well though. Only 4 performances, really good paycheque and we slave boys weren’t required for the curtain call. And of course Mozart. 

The next time I played The NAC, back in the theatre again, was 10 years later when we toured Talking Dirty in the winter of 1985. Packed houses, cascades of laughter and standing ovations on several nights. We used to go down to the bistro on the ground floor next to the canal after the show for a bite and a drink and there were more than a few nights when the tab for our first round was picked up by a table of people who’d just watched the play. There were a couple of nights when we didn’t get a bill for anything because some member(s) of our audience had picked it up for us. 

The Members of Parliament for Vancouver and surrounding areas invited us to come have lunch with them at the Parliamentary cafeteria and then to observe Question Period from the visitor’s gallery. Mulroney was PM then but he wasn’t in the House that day. One of the MPs we’d just had lunch with introduced us to the House and to our surprise almost all of the members there that day stood up, looked up to where we sitting and began to applaud and smile and wave. They’d clearly been to the show themselves.

I’ve been back to Ottawa a couple of times since to see shows at The National Art Gallery. Once to see a traveling show of The Queen’s Pictures in the summer of 1993 when Windsor Castle was being restored after the fire the year before. Then a few years later when they hosted a wonderful traveling show of The Impressionists. Each time we’ve gone to the bistro by the canal for lunch and a glass of wine and bowl of sweet reminiscence.