TV STAR RETURNS TO STAGE
Canadian snags lead in Jerusalem
After almost three decades making TV and movies across the continent, Saskatchewan-born Kim Coates is ready to hop back onstage in Toronto.
The gig that’s lured him back to theatre is Jez Butterworth’s Jeru
salem — to premiere in Toronto next winter — a deeply British tale in which Coates will play daredevil lead Johnny (Rooster) Byron.
Earlier this year, the Sons of Anarchy actor was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Saskatchewan and he won the 2017 ACTRA National Award of Excellence.
It’s been almost three decades since you’ve preformed on a stage. What made you go back to theatre after all these years?
My first love is theatre and that’s where it all began for me. I wanted to try and become the greatest actor I could at that time and stage was everything to me. Before you know it, you do the film thing, you do the TV thing and years flew by and I was constantly asked to go back to the stage from 1990 until the present, but it just never worked out or I couldn’t take the time.
Now that Sons ( of Anarchy) is over, I made sure everyone knew — my American reps and my Canadian reps — that, start looking for a play, it’s time. It’s time to go back to the stage. My two beautiful kids are in their early 20s and they’d never seen their dad onstage, so it’s just time.
You’ll be playing Johnny (Rooster) Byron. What about the role appealed to you?
When I read it, I passed right away. I said to both the boys (co-producers Mitchell Cushman and Philip Riccio) it scared the crap out of me; it’s massive; it’s a play that is so indigenous to that part of England. I just didn’t get it the first time I read it really. I mean I did, it was just the language and the slang from that particular part of the world, it was just overwhelming to me. Then they said, “Please, read it again.” And so I read it a second time and I got it. I read it a third time and I really got it. My daughter read the play and said, “Oh no Dad, you have to do this play, you have to.” So I’m doing it . . . Johnny, he’s a gypsy. He’s folklore, he’s a guy that is a bit of a pied piper with the young adults who want to hang around him and learn about life from him. He’s magnificent, he’s a tortured soul . . . he’s avoided the law all through his life, he’s a stuntman and he’s broken every bone in his body. He’s like a little boy: he’s funny, he’s tragic — it’s going to be the greatest undertaking that’s ever been handed to me and I’m not afraid to fail.
After spending 20, 30 years in front of a camera how are you feeling about being back in front of a live audience?
I have no f---ing idea. I’ve played these massive parts (Macbeth at Stratford, Stanley Kowalski on Broadway) back in the day, so I guess it must be in me somewhere. I don’t even know. I mean I can’t go, “Cut, let’s do it again.” I needed a year to prepare. We’re not going to do it until February of next year, 2018.
Do you think this is the beginning of a lot more of you being onstage?
What I take solace in and such gratitude in is: I can do whatever I want now. We’ve raised our kids and they’re out of the house and I have always said no to a lot of things that I didn’t want to do when films and TV came my way, and I’ve said yes to the ones I wanted to . . . I look forward to everything and coming back to the stage obviously is going to take precedent next year early.
How to you think the theatre scene in Canada has evolved in the last 30 years. What’s it like to come back to that in Toronto?
I haven’t lived in Canada for a while, but I go home as much as I can and more now than ever I love filming in Canada.
I’m so glad that my return to stage is going to be in Toronto. Philip and Mitchell with their two theatre companies, they are exploding with the independent theatre scene and it’s going to be exciting.
I remember going back to Stratford a few years ago and it’s just so vibrant and exciting, and for me to be asked to do this kind of part and for Jez Butterworth to sign off on me doing this part, it’s the perfect time for me to come back to stage, so I’m just super excited to be part of the theatre scene again. Presented by the Company Theatre and Outside the March in association with Starvox Entertainment, Jerusalem will debut at Streetcar Crowsnest, 345 Carlaw Ave., on Feb. 13, 2018. Go to jerusalemTO.ca for tickets.