Metamorphoses a good training ground for emerging actors
Directing the University of Calgary’s School of Creative and Performing Arts’ production of Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses is hardly a change of heart for actor, director and theatre administrator Haysam Kadri.
In his own words, Kadri’s heart has long been invested in teaching and working with aspiring actors and student actors.
He has taught and directed at Mount Royal University and is one of the guiding forces behind Theatre Calgary’s Shakespeare by the Bow summer theatre. He says he always uses emerging artists in his productions for The Shakespeare Company, where he is a co-artistic director.
“Working with young, emerging artists is exhilarating. They are so hungry and I am always in awe of their enthusiasm, energy and impulsiveness. It’s pure gold for a director,” says Kadri, who admits “that hunger for risk that these young people have sadly goes away in time. I know I was way more adventurous when I was at university.”
Kadri says he jumps at opportunities to guest direct at universities and colleges as he did with Metamorphoses, as his own years in drama classes served as the springboard that vaulted him into professional theatre.
In Metamorphoses, Kadri is directing 19 actors.
“Not every one … is necessarily eyeing a career in the arts, but that doesn’t make them any less excited and committed,” he says.
“They are all rising to a very demanding challenge this play presents, but I think that is because they know there is no greater high for an actor at any level than performing for an audience.”
Zimmerman wrote and directed an early draft of Metamorphoses in 1996 for Northwestern University. It opened off-Broadway in 2001 and transferred to Broadway the following year.
The play is inspired by Ovid’s epic poem of the same name. It uses 11 scenes to tell some of the most famous Greek and Roman myths, including those of King Midas, Orpheus and Eurydice, Narcissus, and Apollo, Eros and Psyche. It also calls for a pool of water wide and deep enough to submerge in.
“The large cast and that pool are just two of the reasons I’ve wanted to direct this play for years now,” Kadri says. “These are the kind of restrictions that prevent Metamorphoses from being staged by professional regional theatres.”
Kadri says directing Metamorphoses is a natural progression for him from directing Shakespeare. Having extraordinary characters finding themselves in extraordinary circumstances is the very thing that drew Shakespeare to Greek and Roman storytelling.
“Another reason I’m fascinated by this play,” he says, “is that it is a great exploration of the human condition, which has always been a mainstay of classical theatre, but to find it in a modern play is far too rare.”
The large cast and that pool (of water) are just two of the reasons I’ve wanted to direct this play for years now.