Tim Carroll steers Shaw into new waters
Nearly two years after he was announced as the Shaw Festival’s new artistic director, Tim Carroll craves one thing as he approaches his first season: Sleep.
“It’s exactly what I thought it would be,” says the British-born director during a typically frantic day preparing for the company’s 56th season. “Every single person said to me, ‘You’ll be amazed how luxurious sleep feels.’ It’s true! I’m already in this state of mind where if I get home at 11:30, I kind of go, ‘I’ve got the whole evening left.’”
For Carroll, the pressure is twofold: He not only directs the season-opener Saint Joan, launching the season Thursday night, but he’s the focus for what promises to be a season of change at the Niagaraon-the-Lake company.
Established theatre stars including Michael Therriault and Sara Topham make their Shaw debuts. Genie-winning actor Tom McCamus returns to Shaw after a long, celebrated stint at the Stratford Festival. The Shaw ensemble is noticeably more diverse, with several new faces mingling with company stalwarts such as Jim Mezon and Benedict Campbell.
But the biggest change may be with the audience, says Carroll. Rather, how the audience interacts with the plays themselves. They’re no longer static observers. In some cases they can participate in, even change, the very show they’re watching.
They ’ll be closer. More involved. Carroll is eager to exploit the one undisputed advantage theatre has over other entertainment options: It’s live, right in front of you.
“Not in any dragged-up-on-stage, or singled-out ghastly audience participation way,” he says. “Because we all hate that. But in the sense that their involvement will be much more acknowledged than in most theatres. Sometimes very directly, like in (Bernard Shaw’s) Androcles and the Lion where we will ask the audience to make various decisions for us, and ensure every performance is different.”
For Alan Bennett’s The Madness of George III, some audience members will be on stage sitting in box seats which are actually part of the set. For Will Eno’s Middletown, the audience surrounds the show, giving the sense of conversation between cast and crowd.
There isn’t an overriding theme to the season, says Carroll (“You can’t shoehorn 11 plays into a single theme”). But if there’s anything that connects the 2017 slate at Shaw, it’s the approach taken to them.
“It’s a two-way approach, to acknowledge and cash in on the fact that we are all in the same room together.”
Relevancy shouldn’t be a problem. Saint Joan, despite several previous productions at Shaw, called out to Carroll immediately. It could be done in another hundred years and lose none of its potency — there’s no need to scrape for something ‘different’ about it.
“It’s always a trap to try to be different,” he says. “As soon as you try to be different, you end up being the same. Really, the only thing you can do with every great play is try to bring yourself to it and respond honestly to it.
“Luckily, I haven’t seen any of the Saint Joans done here at the Shaw, so I’m unspoiled by them and not in any kind of reaction against them. I’m coming to the play with fresh eyes. My take is to really strip away everything about it which could get in the way, and to make the actors as clear and simple as they can be so you get the play in a very direct and I hope impactful way.
“It seems to me a play that is never going to lose its urgency for us. You’re never going to have to justify why you’re doing Saint Joan as long as people are people.”
Among the more intriguing offerings of the season is a femalecentric adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula by Scottish poet and feminist Liz Lochhead.
“This isn’t trying to educate anybody,” says Carroll. “It’s simply revealing the deep truth of the piece, which is that the energy of the piece comes from a deepseated fear of female sexuality. What really scares the men about Dracula is not that he sucks their women’s blood, but that they might like it.”
When he’s not directing the season opener and launching a new era at Shaw (he’s just the third artistic director in 37 seasons), he’s adjusting to a new home in Niagara-on-the-Lake.
“It’s such a wonderfully designed town for living,” he says. “Everything is right here. I can go swim in the lake, walk among the vines, cycle down the path. Lovely restaurants.
“I’ve been made to feel incredibly welcome, both by the employees at Shaw and the wider circle of friends at the Shaw.”
But despite its Victorian charm, Niagara-on-the-Lake isn’t quite reminding Carroll of home.
“It certainly feels like a little slice of England, but it’s a slice of England from before I was born.”