Centaur's new leader, Gordon McCall

Performing Arts & Entertainment in Canada, Summer, 1997 by Karen Bell

Gordon McCall was born in Dorchester, a small community just east of London, Ontario. After attending the University of Western Ontario, Queens and the University of British Columbia, McCall embarked on an acting/directing career with an emphasis on the works of Shakespeare. McCall has written that Shakespeare's great stories, unforgettable characters and amazing language are a trampoline to launch the imagination through time and space, across time zones and generations.

Opportunity did not knock at the Stratford Festival, however, and McCall returned to western Canada, becoming the first artistic director of Winnipeg's Prairie Theatre Exchange. He later found himself in Saskatoon, and after years of performing improve theatre in a thing called The Saskatoon Soaps, McCall's drive and independence led him to found Saskatoon's Shakespeare On The Saskatchewan Festival (serving as the first artistic director from 1984-1991). He was also the founding artistic director of Vancouver's Touchstone Theatre.

After working in the west for about 15 years, McCall, his wife and two boys moved to Sudbury where, in 1990, he became artistic director of The Sudbury Theatre Centre. Programming a variety of works, both challenging and light, McCall says that Sudbury audiences [like those everywhere] popularized light plays and musicals, such as Shirley Valentine, but he notes with satisfaction that Shakespeare was well received by Theatre Centre patrons. Having directed (with Robert LePage) a bilingual Romeo and Juliet at the Shakespeare on the Saskatoon Festival, the show went on a national tour which included Sudbury, and was very well-received there. Serious plays often didn't do well in Sudbury, says McCall, but inexplicably, certain Canadian plays like Cold Comfort or Toronto Mississippi were a very big draw. "I take very fond memories from Sudbury," he says. "It's one of the best small theatre facilities in the country. It was a real pleasure to live and work there."

McCall the family man/outdoorsman enjoyed northern Ontario as well. His two sons, Sean and Spencer, played hockey and he was able to pursue his passion for dogsled racing. He owns a team of 14 huskies and likes to participate in mid-distance races, favouring competitions of 60 or 70 miles. A constant writer of plays and screenplays, McCall authored a play based on a two-year stint in the Yukon. Running on Frozen Air is about six competitors in The Yukon Quest, a 1,000-mile dogsled race from Whitehorse to Fairbanks. In his play, the competition becomes a metaphor for the human pursuit of dreams.

I imagined that moving to Montreal would necessitate a big change in the McCall lifestyle but I was wrong; he plans to move family and dog team to a home outside the city where they can be near the land. Happily, Quebec, New Hampshire, Maine and Labrador are all nearby places where dogsledding is a popular sport.

On the professional front, the friendly and outgoing McCall is looking forward to working in Montreal; there is a major film community which may inspire his screenwriting muse. It's amazing enough that he finds time for writing when running a theatre company, but he also plans to act in occasional productions, saying that "acting is a good way for the community to get to know you". As an artist, he finds the city to be a positive place. "Montreal is a real cultural mecca," he says "and a very cosmopolitan city. No other city in Canada gives such status to the artist." Centaur audiences should enjoy McCall's choice of programming. His boundless optimism will be an asset, and his ability to conceive alternative works and outreach programmes could bring various ethnic communities into the audience, something which will enliven the experience.

RELATED ARTICLE: THE UPCOMING CENTAUR SEASON

Gordon McCall began his tenure with the Centaur Theatre by directing this season's Angels in America, Part I, which will be followed next year by Part II. For next season, his programming is varied. The Orphan Muses by Quebec playwright Michel Marc Bouchard (who wrote Lillies) involves four siblings whose mother ran off with a Spanish lover twenty years earlier. The Crows Theatre production of Lee McDougall's black comedy High Life will give Montrealers a chance to see a very popular play before it goes to Broadway. Taking Sides by Ron Harwood, author of The Dresser, examines the mystery of a famous conductor suspected of being a Nazi sympathizer who apparently saved many Jews. Steve Martin's Picasso at the Lapin Agile impresses McCall as being funny, intelligent, insightful and imaginative. Of course, Shakespeare will be part of the equation; McCall will direct Twelfth Night himself, saying it will be done in southern American dialect, sort of a "Gone With the Wind" interpretation. (There is a good reason for this: McCall says that scholars have determined today's southern dialect to be the closest to Elizabethan speech.)

The Centaur also plans an alternative series of daring and unique works called Walk on the Wild Side. One act which is booked for the series is Mump Smoot, so-called downs of horror, who can cross any language barrier. Continuing in this multicultural spirit, McCall hopes to expand the Centaur's reach by collaborating with various ethnic communities.