Stage keeps screen actors sharp
U.S. playwright Donald Margulies’ Dinner With Friends gives them a workout
Walsh started teaching at Haven after Ratner saw her work with another student on a scene from Dinner With Friends.
“This is when Loretta was taking a class,” Ratner says. “I saw how working with Loretta had changed this other woman, and I went, OK, that’s what I need, somebody like that.”
So when Walsh and Lobby Hero castmate Noel Johansen started talking about doing another play, they hit on Dinner With Friends.
The production blurs the lines between students and teachers, with fellow student Jenn McLean-Angus joining them in the cast. Directing the play is film and stage actor Jennifer Clement, who herself teaches at the Vancouver Film School.
“We end up being collaborators,” says Ratner, who studies himself with visiting teachers.
All of the cast are busy in the film and TV scene, but Ratner says acting class “is a lifechanging place for a young actor.
“The relationships I formed back almost 25 years studying in Vancouver, those are still among my best friends and collaborators. John Cassini, Nick Lea, Frank Cassini ... Molly Parker, she was there when she was just a kid.”
Many of the longtime friends he names are now teachers themselves amid their own acting careers. And this production is a benefit to honour another friend who mixed acting and teaching, the late Babz Chula.
“People come into class and do things that most people spend their lives avoiding,” Ratner says, citing a John Patrick Shanley quote about theatre being a safe place to do unsafe things.
Then it’s back to that scene, and you see what he means.