My Story @ Tarragon
Seana McKenna
It was the Spring of 1974. I had persuaded my high school boyfriend to go with me into Toronto to see a play at a theatre north of Bloor, off Bathurst. The theatre was called the Tarragon. The play was called Hosanna.
As the play unfolded, I was introduced not only to the world of Hosanna and Cuirette, but to the world of Tremblay. I remember the wonderful performances of Richard Monette and Richard Donat vividly. I remember half-naked men in black underwear. They were facing each other as men and lovers, emotionally naked. I remember being moved to tears. I remembered cider and big cookies. I was introduced to the world of the Tarragon.
With my National Theatre School class, I saw the premiere of Jitters. Bill Glassco had come to the school to do scene study with us a year or two before,and arranged for us to meet the cast. We chatted with the inestimable Charmion King. We went out for drinks with David French and Les Carlson and other cast members. I think Miles Potter, my husband-to-be, declined. I would catch up with him a few years later.
Since then, I have seen many, many plays at The Tarragon, and have been fortunate enough to have been in a few: Erika Ritter’s Murder at McQueen, Paula Vogel’s The Baltimore Waltz and now Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking.
When I came back to work here after many years away, I discovered that you could still not flush the dressing room toilet if anyone was on stage. I am not sure if I was disheartened or delighted. The quotes from plays, signed by players, still covered the dressing room walls. They had multiplied with the years, creating historical wallpaper, evidence in the world of ephemeral play-making that “we were here”.
I was doing a one-person show, but as I put on my makeup, I was surrounded by friends and colleagues, some no longer with us. As I do my hair, I am reminded of the plays I have seen, stories that by their telling, also say “we were here”. And as I do my vocal exercises, I might get sad with all the remembering of things past, but then, I notice with hope and pleasurable anticipation, that there is still a lot of room on those walls.
Celebrating over thirty years as a professional actor, Ms. McKenna is delighted to return to the Tarragon where she was last seen in The Baltimore Waltz in 1993, and prior to that in Murder at McQueen. She first performed The Year of Magical Thinking at the Belfry Theatre in Victoria, where she also appeared in Educating Rita, Atlantis, and the first Canadian production of another solo piece, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, which toured Canada. Most recently, she played the Marquise de Merteuil in Dangerous Liasons and Paulina in The Winter’s Tale at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, where she has spent 19 seasons playing more than twenty of Shakespeare’s leading ladies, including his wife in the one-woman play, Shakespeare’s Will. After taking The Year of Magical Thinking to the NAC, Ms. McKenna will revisit Shakespeare’s Will at Regina’s Globe Theatre and then at Stratford, where she will also play the title role in Richard III.
Tell us all about it at tarragontheatre.com/mystory.