Escaping work-day stress, in a courtroom
Steve O’Brien and Lynne Atkinson find relaxation on theatre stage in ‘Handy Dandy’
When you work at a stressful job, what do you do to relax?
You go to a community theatre and pretend you are someone else.
That’s just what Steve O’Brien, a prosecutor for the Hamilton Crown Attorney’s Office and Lynne Atkinson, a funeral director for Dodsworth and Brown Funeral Home in Ancaster, do to destress.
Right now, they’re appearing in The Players’ Guild of Hamilton’s latest production, “Handy Dandy” by William Gibson, directed by Maureen Dwyer.
And they are both chuffed at the notion of taking on the play’s outsized, sometimes outrageous, characters.
“Handy Dandy” is about a nun who is arrested for protesting at a nuclear arms factory and the irascible judge who takes her on in his courtroom in Boston.
The play has a message about nuclear disarmament that was certainly pertinent in the 1980s, when it was first performed. But, with world conditions as they are now, that message might even be more important today.
Steve O’Brien was always interested in plays and acting. He did some theatre at Michael Power High School in Toronto when he was a student.
Later, after moving to Hamilton and working as a defence lawyer, O’Brien came back to acting. He played in a Hamilton Lawyers’ Production of “12 Angry Men” at Theatre Aquarius. And that time, the acting bug bit hard.
“Theatre seemed like a natural fit for me. Law was where my aptitude lay. I’d done a lot of debating and public speaking and I was good at those things. So, I had some attributes that worked for acting. But is acting like prosecuting in court? Not really. I’ve done a number of murder trials and really you do have someone’s life in your hands. I have to believe the person I am prosecuting is guilty. I have actually never found myself lying on my back at night and believing the person in the dock to be innocent,” he says.
“But, there’s a lot of responsibility and you do have power. You learn that you must let the facts and the evidence lead you. You are there to help people really, those charged and those who are the victims of the crime. Of course, the job can be a stressful thing.”
That’s where community theatre comes in.
“It’s not the same as my job, not at all. You can stand up in a courtroom and try to declaim all you want. Judges, you see, won’t let you declaim. In the theatre, you’ve got an audience and they’re believing you, buying what you are selling.”
Lynne Atkinson also deals with people at a time of terrible stress. In her role as a funeral director, she provides comfort, final arrangements and counselling.
“You are simply helping people at a very bad time. Of course, it can be very stressful because there is a lot of pain and sadness going on,” she says.
Like O’Brien, Atkinson grew up in Toronto where she always had an interest in theatre.
“I do theatre because it’s a good feeling to be on stage, to be performing. It’s also a kind of release.”
Like O’Brien, too, Atkinson feels the waves of stress from the daily grind diminishing, as she takes on a different role.
“I play Molly Eagan and she’s strong and feisty in her convictions. I like the fact there are so many layers to her character. She knows she is breaking the law go- ing back again and again to protest at the armament factory, but she cares about humanity and she works to change the world. She does have tests of her faith and she questions God.”
O’Brien likes Judge Henry Pu- laski.
“He’s a crude, edgy man in a num- ber of ways. He’s a guy’s guy and a womanizer. But there’s something about this little nun in his courtroom that breaks through his crustiness. He likes her. He wants to help her. ‘Handy Dandy’ is really about the two people involved, not so much the issue of nuclear armament. It’s about the way these two people affect each other in an odd couple sort of way.” Atkinson agrees.
“It’s a story about coming to an understanding. She sees him as the enemy at first. But there is an accommodation made here. I think his transformation is bigger than hers, but both characters find a path of change during the play. I think they like each other by the end.”
Like Atkinson, O’Brien wants to make the playwright’s words live.
“I just love doing that,” he says. “Acting allows me to use parts of my heart and soul and brain I’m completely convinced would not get used otherwise.”
It sounds like Atkinson and O’Brien have found a “Handy Dandy” way of relieving daytime stress by acting new lives at night.