Brent The view from Carver’s corner
Celebrated stage actor finds meaning in the eclectic collection of songs in his latest show, Walk Me to the Corner
“You find (the show) in the doing of it. As you do in a song or a scene.” BRENT CARVER CREATOR OF WALK ME TO THE CORNER
Brent Carver is one of Canada’s most beloved stage talents and among its more elusive. He doesn’t work consistently at any major theatre and, when he does, it’s sometimes in a surprisingly small or featured role.
In person he comes across as both ethereal — slight of build, quiet of speech — and acutely present, in his body and in the moment.
So when asked why he’s premiering a new evening of music this week at the Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company in North York, the answer is surprisingly straightforward: because the company asked him to.
“It’s their 10th-anniversary season and (artistic directors) Avery Saltzman and David Eisner ap- proached me — I’ve done a few things for them before, a Harold Arlen evening and a few fundraisers.”
The theatre gave Carver a wide berth to perform material that interested him, “while bearing our audience in mind,” Saltzman says.
Carver seized on the idea of an evening of songs by Jewish composers, “with maybe a couple of exceptions,” he allows.
Walk Me to the Corner will feature the work of an eclectic range of musical artists including Kurt Weill, George Gershwin, Arlen, Jule Styne, John Kander and Fred Ebb, Bob Dylan, Randy Newman and Jason Robert Brown.
For Saltzman, the evening’s significance goes beyond the composers’ shared religious background. “Brent adds his own understanding of what it means to have faith, believe in culture, and the openness to ask questions of himself and of his higher power.”
The production is a collaboration with music director Reza Jacobs, with whom Carver has worked on a number of concert productions for the musical theatre company Acting Up Stage.
Since August, the pair have been working steadily to identify and organize Walk Me to the Corner’s repertoire.
“It’s been really rewarding doing that,” Carver says. “We went through a myriad of songs, things you think are familiar.”
In the process, Carver and Jacobs have discovered the show’s form and potential meanings as they researched and rehearsed. “You find (the show) in the doing of it. As you do in a song or a scene,” Carver says.
He is a thoughtful conversationalist, who frequently stops speaking to search for the right word. But when asked if putting this show together has been enjoyable or overwhelming one, his answer is immediate.
“It’s both. Overwhelming because . . . it’s these great composers; it’s so vast. At the same time it’s very exciting when things surprisingly connect when you least expect it.”
Carver will perform the show accompanied by Jacobs on piano and Anna Atkinson on violin, viola and accordion. It will involve a combination of structure and spontaneity on a number of levels.
Song orders may change nightly and he says he’s “more and more interested” in rediscovering material every time he performs it.
“You do all your preparation work and then you see what happens; you see what those words and those notes mean at that moment,” Carver says.
The show’s title references intimacy, but also parting and loss: “We discover our stories and have companions, and we walk to the corner and we have to make a decision. Somebody’s going home, well, we all are, eventually.”
It’s also about the place of art in the artist’s life: “I have always considered plays and songs kind of companions as well.”
It was announced this past week that Carver will return to the Stratford Festival next season, after a gap of six years, to play the clown Feste in Twelfth Night, directed by Martha Henry, and the servant Rowley in Sheridan’s The School for Scandal, directed by Antoni Cimolino.
While neither are musicals per se, Feste is a role that involves singing and which will again unite Carver and Jacobs, who will compose the production’s music. Rejoining the Stratford company means displacing himself from Niagara-on-the-Lake, where he’s lived for 20 years, but Carver says this is a familiar pattern: “My cat travels with me; I pack up my car and we go. That’s what I do: I’ve been doing it for about 45 years.”
Carver turns 65 later this month but describes himself as still a learner. He looks after himself as a performer by “taking classes. Movement classes, voice classes, I study with various people, I do workshops . . . I am very fortunate to have had great coaches and teachers.”
And he sees “a lot of theatre” because he’s interested in the work but also because, “I like being in a theatre, like in a theatre or even what someone calls a theatre. If someone called this a performance space” — he gestures to the café where we’re sitting — “I’d be like, here we go!”
And then off he goes, to have his picture taken for this article: the consummate person of the theatre, finding his place in another frame. Walk Me to the Corner plays from Nov. 8 to 20 at the Greenwin Theatre, Toronto Centre for the Arts. Go to hgjewishtheatre.com or call 1-855-9852787 for tickets.