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Dec. 23, 2011
A master of his craft(s)
Blackbird’s Waiting for Godot starts Dec. 29.
OLGA LIVSHIN
“My work is so interesting, I don’t need to unwind,” said Adam Henderson, a Vancouver actor and acting teacher. Currently, he is rehearsing the role of Lucky for the upcoming production of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot by Blackbird Theatre.
This will be the actor’s third engagement with Blackbird, a local theatrical company that brings classical repertoire to Vancouver. It is not surprising that John Wright, the artistic director of Blackbird, cast Henderson as one of his players. With his British training and extensive European experience as a theatre, radio and screen performer, Henderson seems “custom-made” for classical theatre.
Henderson’s exposure to European theatre began in 1979, when he enrolled in Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, although he had been acting professionally in Toronto and Winnipeg before that. “I became a professional actor first, studied acting later,” he told the Independent. He didn’t mention that being accepted into the Old Vic is a high honor: the school only accepts 12 people a year out of thousands of applicants, making it one of the most exclusive drama schools in the world.
After Old Vic, Henderson worked in theatre, screen and radio, audiobooks and TV commercials, acting and directing. Eventually, the frenetic professional pace he maintained for years started to affect his health. “I was exhausted and needed a change. I wanted a more settled life,” he explained of his move to Vancouver in 2000.
The move proved beneficial to both the city and the actor. Vancouver gained a classically trained actor, and Henderson found a new home and a unique professional niche. Besides acting, he has choreographed stage fights for several local productions and he teaches at Vancouver Film School and at the University of British Columbia. His subjects include movement for film actors, unarmed combat and sword fights for theatre and movies, accents and dialects.
“Accents are a passion of mine,” he said. “They’re more attuned to accents and dialects in England than here, so I learned how to change my accent and now I can teach others.” His resumé catalogues a long list of accents in which he can speak and that he can teach, including Arabic, French, Russian, Cuban, BBC English, London Cockney and many others.
Teaching is only one side of the old theatrical tradition to which Henderson belongs. Another side is nonstop studying. According to the actor, there are no limits for improvement, and the road is more important than the destination. “People who work hard on their craft value it higher. As a result, they last longer,” he said. “I knew many very talented actors who disappeared after a while. Others, maybe not so talented but with lots of perseverance, take what’s available and work constantly. They go much farther.... Talent plus perseverance equals luck. You have to be ready when it comes.”
The actor subscribes to his own medicine. “Craft is all about the process,” he said. “You never stop learning. You need to be open-minded, accepting. Many actors are; they’re vigorous, full of energy, they’re young inside. I met such people in the theatre when I was a teenager, and it attracted me.”
For Henderson, each new role is an exploration, a galaxy of new possibilities. “With every role, with every play, your perspective is challenged. You absorb the role, bits and pieces from it. It alters you. You become your role, a little bit, without paying the consequences. I once played a homeless man; it gave me a new understanding of what it means not to have a place to sleep. I stopped being an outsider.”
But being an insider in such a demanding and thought-provoking play as Waiting for Godot is not easy. “The play asks many questions but it doesn’t attempt to answer them,” Henderson said. “The play is all about waiting and what we do while we wait. We’re all waiting: for death, for wealth, for luck, for a weekend, for Armageddon, for our life to happen. It’s a human condition.... It’s not a coincidence that part of Godot is God.”
He sees the play as Beckett’s investigation of the meaning of life. “The entertainment industry is mostly uplifting. It celebrates life: comedy, singing, dancing. But Beckett was interested in the shadows, in the darkness. He wrote this play after the war and, at first, it wasn’t very well received. It’s ambiguous, not tidy. It’s dark and funny simultaneously.... Beckett was looking for humor in the darkness. Maybe it’s the only way to deal with it. Look at Fiddler on the Roof; it’s a comedy about the darkest times.”
Despite the initial cold reception, Waiting for Godot has become an acknowledged theatrical classic. “As any classical play, it changes with context,” said Henderson. “You know, it’s now being staged in Ramallah, with Israeli and Palestinian actors. Just think how much the Jews were waiting for: for homeland, for peace, for acceptance. Some of it is almost impossible to reach.... This play means different things to everyone. It’s disturbing on some level, as any classic should be. It’s not just passing the time.... It’s almost a clown show: funny, sad and poetic. Laughter is our protection against fear. We laugh when something we fear happens to someone else. Clowns exploit that.”
Henderson interprets the character of Lucky as a sort of sad clown, comic and tragic at the same time: “Lucky is a slave. He can’t live without his master, but neither can his master live without him. They are connected, tied by a rope.... None of us can live alone, without others.”
Henderson’s contemplations of the play led to his musing about the role of a theatrical director. “Directing is much harder than acting. Only after I’d done some directing, I started appreciating directors. John Wright is a great director.... A director is painting with people, but they’re living actors; they never do exactly as the director asks. For a director, it’s impossible to achieve his vision, frustrating. Acting is easier. In acting, I’m only responsible for myself and my role.”
In addition to acting, directing and teaching, Henderson is also a well-known voice actor. He dubs lots of Japanese animé and enjoys it. “It’s very interesting,” he said. “In a cartoon, I get to play anyone and anything: a woman, a child, an animal.” Audiobook recording holds a similar appeal: he gets to portray every character, which is especially attractive to him when he records such classic works as those by Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway or John Steinbeck.
But live theatre doesn’t have a rival in his heart. “In the living theatre, you get energy back from the audience,” explained Henderson. “You have control. It’s very satisfying to play the character arch all the way to the end. When recording, you do only bits and pieces at a time, and the editor has control.”
Another advantage of live theatre for him is that it is open to improvisation. “If we do everything on stage exactly as we pre-planned in rehearsals, the show is dead,” he said. “A little bit of improvisation makes it interesting, keeps the actors and the public awake ... as long as all the words come in the right order. It’s important to maintain a balance between control and release. You have to give the audience an illusion of no control, of spontaneity.”
Blackbird’s Waiting for Godot is scheduled to run from Dec. 29 to Jan. 21 at the Cultch. For tickets and information, visit thecultch.com.
Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
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