The cast of Heroes ponders the meaning of life death and?design. Well at least one is thinking about design.
Designer-turned-actor finds his own starring role
If you attend theatre in Calgary with any frequency you’ll recognize the name Terry Gunvordahl. Usually you’ll find his name under the production team credits as set ( One Flea Spare ) or lighting designer ( Evil Dead: The Musical ). But in recent years Gunvordahl has taken the somewhat unusual step of moving onstage from the backstage and it’s a move with significant effects for this season — it was Gunvordahl’s onstage aspirations that led to Sage Theatre’s season-opening production of Gérald Sibleyras’s Heroes .
A 20-year veteran of Calgary’s theatre scene Gunvordahl had already appeared onstage in Sage Theatre’s 2005 production of The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek and Downstage’s The Dishwashers but balked at the notion of auditioning.
“I’m not going to go out and join the cattle call” he says. “I’m too old to do that and I’ve been around too long for that.”
Instead Gunvordahl decided that the best way to find a part would be locate a show that excited him. With the complementary goal of working with theatre mainstay Grant Reddick Gunvordahl set out in search of a play that could star both and found it in Heroes .
Gunvordahl was immediately struck by the iconic British playwright Tom Stoppard’s involvement as the play’s translator. “I love language” he says. “I love words and Tom Stoppard is a beautiful wordsmith.”
Embedded in Stoppard’s characteristic sly intelligence and humour — it won the 2006 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Comedy — is a story about aging that resonated particularly with Gunvordahl a baby boomer who notes that his generation is increasingly aware of its age. Set in 1959 Heroes is about three World War One veterans living in a retirement home in France — Philippe (Gunvordahl) Gustave (Duval Lang) and Henri (Reddick) who dream of ways to escape. If they can’t make it to Indochina they want to get at least as far as a grove of poplar trees on a nearby hilltop.
“Thematically the story is about these three guys dealing with an enemy they can’t defeat — death — and coming face-to-face with that” says director Trevor Rueger.
As Philippe who passes out frequently because of a piece of shrapnel in his brain Gunvordahl plays a man who must come to terms with every lucid moment. Far from a tragic disability Gunvordahl sees his character’s flickering attention as a blessing.
“[Phillipe’s] there to live everyday to its fullest” he says. “He knows that every minute he has got is important.
While war would seem to be an essential element in the play Gunvordahl emphasizes that Heroes is not a war story per se only a story in which war has played an important role.
“This is a story about three guys getting older and dealing with the past” he says.
It’s in those memories that Gunvordahl recalls listening to his father’s recollections about World War Two the sense of an older generation passing down its tales.
It’s in the contrast of these moments says Rueger that the play finds its balance. “At moments it’s screamingly funny and at others it’s very poignant” he says.
But Sage’s production of Heroes is hardly an event concerned just with looking back. Featuring a trio of actors established upcoming and returning — Lang having recently surrendered the helm of Quest Theatre — the production is driven by an energy that is fundamentally forward-looking. For Gunvordahl a designer-turned-actor whose drive to find work that resonated with him brought him to Sage’s stage the ultimate lesson is simple.
“If you wait for things to come to you you’ll be sitting there an awful long time” he says.
