Nothing like family drama on the stage of life
Actor Shaun Smyth and wife, Jennie, and McMaster’s NICU team up for Thomas
If you saw Shaun Smyth in “Playing with Fire,” the play about abused hockey player Theo Fleury at Theatre Aquarius, you will have remembered him. He gave a riveting performance.
He was, in fact, playing the same show at the Sudbury Theatre Centre this past September when he received an urgent call on the backstage telephone.
It was his wife Jennie calling. They were expecting a baby who wasn’t due until Jan. 13. “My water broke,” Jennie said. It was Sept. 30. Shaun’s skates were laced. He was about to go on. There’s only one actor in “Playing with Fire.”
No Shaun, no show. It was a scary time. Jennie was in Hamilton. Shaun was in Sudbury.
“I made it through the run of the play, but I had my bags packed and was ready to leave for Hamilton at a moment’s notice,” Smyth says.
“Jennie’s mom took care of (daughters) Margaret, 8 and Iona, 6. Jennie took a cab to the hospital at 4 a.m. on Oct. 1,” Smyth says. It wasn’t until almost 11 days later before the baby arrived, but, “when little Thomas came, he came fast. There wasn’t even time for an epidural.”
Smyth finished all performances of the Sudbury Fleury show. He was, however, at Jennie’s bedside for the birth. He cut the cord. But the drama wasn’t over.
When he was born, Thomas weighed just 34 ounces.
“One of us was at the hospital every day for five months. I can’t praise McMaster NICU enough. They were wonderful. That hospital is one of the great things about living in Hamilton,” he says. “We got to bring Thomas home March 5. He had a feeding tube and had only started breathing on his own without some support the week before. He’s a wonder. He’s been through so much. Two surgeries: one heart and one double hernia. For most of his six months he was on a ventilator. He had two hospital acquired infections requiring weeks of antibiotics. It was intense. But Thomas took it all in stride and had a smile for everyone.”
“I never thought much about work,” Smyth says. “I would walk down the halls in the hospital and I would think I looked like crap. I’d see myself in a mirror and wonder who that guy was. I didn’t exercise or anything. I phoned my agent and said I can’t work. I can’t think about anything else right now. I couldn’t commit to anything else. When COVID-19 came along, it pulled the rug out from under me. But at least we were under one roof and all together. We could look after each other,” he says
“I think of this as a fallow period. All actors are in the same boat. There is no work. I try to think creatively and think of ways to make theatre work. I’m now the producer of ‘Playing with Fire’ and I’ve thought of doing it outside on real ice come the winter. I’ve also thought of doing it in an old arena in Hamilton and have experimented a little with that. Or maybe at a drive-in movie theatre.”
“Financially, it’s a hunker down thing for us. My expenses are down. We cook at home. And I don’t need a lot of gas for the car. I can do voice auditions from home and maybe, in a few months, things will get better.”
Smyth has already lost a run of “Playing with Fire” at Blyth Theatre Festival. “That was important but it’s gone,” he says.
“Still, other things remain. We still have home care to help, but they don’t come inside. The nutritionist drops her scale at the door.
We bring it in and wipe it, weigh Thomas and then set the scale outside for her.”
He says he is learning a lot from his son. “One of the biggest lessons is proving to be so valuable in these strange times. It’s about being in the moment, embracing it, good or bad and living it fully because it’s really all we have. Those six months we went through were loaded with uncertainty. There was no way to predict what tomorrow would look like, never mind that afternoon. And things change so quickly you have to adapt. It’s similar to what we are all experiencing with this pandemic.”
So, “be here now, have faith, love the ones you’re with. We will get through this and we will be better humans on the other side.”
And, oh yes, in case you’d like to know, Thomas is a healthy 13 pounds. Hallelujah for that.
“We got to bring Thomas home March 5. He had a feeding tube and had only started breathing on his own without some support the week before. He’s a wonder.”
SHAUN SMYTH