Maxim Mazumdar challenged performers
Le Jeune looking forward to help honour his memory in ‘Maxim’s Dream’
Returning to the stage in Stephenville is going to be bittersweet for Cliff Le Jeune, the man who succeeded Maxim Mazumdar as artistic director of the Stephenville Theatre Festival.
He will be on stage with other actors who worked under Mazumdar, along with a few young people who weren’t even born when the founder of the festival graced the stage.
Le Jeune is thrilled that honour is being brought to Mazumdar in this 40th Anniversary season of the theatre festival because of what he done for theatre in this province and for many performers.
“He saved my life as an actor and an artist. I would never have got the chances to do all the shows that I did without him,” he said.
That’s why it’s bittersweet returning to Stephenville as he’ll get to renew old acquaintances but of course he will be missing Maxim.
Le Jeune said in the early years of the festival there were lots of people working there that were international stars, brought in by Mazumdar.
“It was staggering the people that went through that festival,” he said. “The fact the festival is still happening and honouring Maxim through a tribute show is very fitting of how we all got there (succeeded in live theatre),” he said.
Le Jeune said when he took over the festival it was all about honouring Maxim’s dream because Mazumdar challenged him in many ways that he’s not been challenged since.
“I’ve done some amazing shows, but with Maxim it was doing shows a different way than anyone else had done them,” he said.
Le Jeune said he did “Evita” like nobody did it before and he wasn’t in anything before or since like the way Mazumdar directed “Godspell” and had the cast do it in Kabuki (classical Japanese dance-drama) style.
“You’d be hard pressed to think of anything more challenging as an artist. We had to learn a whole new way of physical movement,” he said.
Le Jeune, now 62, said those were challenging times and the people of western Newfoundland embraced it. There are not a lot of communities that can say that you’d have sold out cabarets with Sondheim, he said.
While hadn’t seen it, Le Jeune said he thought the short film on Maxim was a lovely idea and that it was interesting to see the College of North Atlantic’s Digital Filmmaking program preserve some of the festival’s history.
Le Jeune, who now makes Halifax home, came to Stephenville in 1982 and finished up with the Stephenville Theatre Festival in 1994.
“Maxim’s Dream,” will feature songs and stories from the early years of the festival and is being staged one night only on Aug. 1.
The show includes director Edmund Maclean, musical director Gary Graham, Jerry Etienne and Cindy O’neill, among others.