JAMES STRECKER: Please tell us about one or more projects that you have been working on or have recently completed. Why exactly do they matter to you and why should they matter to us?
RON KENNELL: I have been doing a lot of writing lately. I wrote a screenplay about the Komagata Maru incident for First Take Entertainment. As it often goes, I am still awaiting word about when it will go into production. I am also working on several plays including a play about Vera McNichol a renowned psychic who lived just outside Stratford, in Milbank Ontario. I gratefully received a grant from The Ontario Arts Council to bring that story to light.
JS: How did doing these projects change you as a person and as a creator?
RK: Writing the Komagata Maru incident called upon my love of history. It demanded to be told with very little creative fiction, but we didn’t want it to be a documentary either. It became a puzzle. I had to keep the integrity of the broad epic story while keeping intimacy of the characters and their intentions very clear. Happily, it gave rise to an incredible character who more than peripherally bears witness to the incident and allows the story to continue when it looks like it is done. It is exciting to write this way because, as an actor, I have been given a keen insight into motivations and drives of people and characters and the secrets they keep and the power of seeing them revealed. The play about Vera McNichol ties my family heritage to a local legend. My grandmother visited Vera on several occasions and Vera would “charm” for my grandmother and actually heal her. Melding the personal with possibility is the creative world in which I thrive.
JS: What might others not understand or appreciate about the work you produce or do?
RK: I am a character actor. People who meet me, tend to see me in a certain way. I think this is especially true for those who work in casting. I am not knocking them but it is hard to feel categorized. Our first instinct is to make assumptions about a person when we see them. Who we are is primarily defined by our looks. I personally think many would think it worth crossing to the opposite side of a dark street – to avoid me. In my career it has meant that I play some really dark characters – especially in film and TV. As a character actor in Shakespearean plays, I have played Benvolio, Oswald, K=Launcelot Gobbo, Lucullus, Macduff, and Caliban. But I have a Romeo inside me; a Hamlet; a Petruchio; and a not always tempered Richard III, too. It would be fun to delve into larger roles as deeply as I am able to explore a character part.
JS: What are the most important parts of yourself that you put into your work?
RK: I sometimes wish I was a painter. Then I could see the vision and create it. Because I am by nature a sharing person and theatre as a perfectly imperfect collaborative art it is the best place I could have hoped to have landed. I need other people to express myself. We create paintings together. I never forget that. If the show has a social commentary; if it helps the underdog or casts a new light on an old trope, I am in! Even writing requires meeting and expressing all types of people; and especially the ones that we don’t understand and may not like.
JS: What are your biggest challenges as a creative person?
RK: One of my biggest challenges as a creative person is focusing on one thing at a time. My mind explodes with ideas. I am a stranger in my own dreamscapes and in them I speak in languages I don’t even know. I want to write about it all but I don’t want to miss anything while I am holed up in my attic. It is a joyous problem; a curse and a blessing.
JS: Imagine that you are meeting two or three people, living or dead, whom you admire because of their work in your form of artistic expression. What would you say to them and what would they say to you?
RK: I would ask Laurence Olivier if he ever really felt like he gave a definitive performance of a role: Hamlet, for example. He would likely say “Yes, of course darling I was a brilliant Hamlet. But what I hope I would hear is that we all fail beautifully as artists. We all win too. We continue to tell these stories because each person resonates differently with the role. There is no such thing as definitive. I would ask Fellini how theatre inspired him and how it failed him? He would likely tell me that it neither failed him nor inspired him, that humanity inspired him and failed him. Art is the way of focusing the lens of chaos. And I would ask Madeline Khan how I could be more funny. She would likely say., “You can’t force it. You are funny or you are not.” But what I think she would mean is “Clowns have all survived the most terrible of tragedies.”
JS: Please describe at least one major turning point in your life that helped to make you who you are as a creative artist.
RK: I did a play called Aurash at the International Theatre Festival in Tehran, Iran in 2002. It was a Persian story told in English. It was a very physical show and a part of the legacy of Persian drama that lives in the heart of Iranian culture. The way they know their mythology, tell stories, absorb theatre and appreciate artists gave me an entirely different perspective on theatre and its relevance as a social construct for change and freedom of expression.
JS: What are the hardest things for an outsider to understand about your life as a person in the arts?
RK: Sometimes I despair as an artist when I am told that “celebrities” should keep their mouths shut when it comes to politics. We are citizens too and like a chorus in any Greek drama we are looking for a leader who is going to represent our ideals too. It is almost as if because we are mercurial in our ability to change characters and to alter our own perspectives, it makes us untethered, unmanageable.
JS: Please tell us what you haven’t attempted as yet that you would like to do in the arts? Why the delay so far?
RK: Well, I have never directed a play. Not because I don’t want to, but because I know how much work goes into directing a play. I have stretched myself in other ways with my writing and directing screenplays. So, I want to honour my own limits. That’s not to say I don’t want to direct. I have been honoured by being asked to direct, but the time was just not right.
JS: If you could re-live your life in the arts, how would you change it and why?
RK: I would have studied dance at an early age, for the discipline and for the minute expression that dancers can access. I would build a movement vocabulary for theatre through dance. And I would have started writing sooner.
JS: Let’s talk about the state of the arts in today’s society, including the forms in which you work. What specifically gives you hope and what specifically do you find depressing?
RK: We still do not have status of the Artist legislation in Canada legislation. We are easily dismissed as elite. We are dismissed as glorified waiters. We are rarely considered artists. We were often told as young artists, “If you can do anything else, do it. It’s hard. Success is rare. Fame is fleeting.” We are an army of fighters – battle worn, dismissed before we started. And we are still here. Yet we rise. I have vowed to never dismiss a child with an interest in the arts. It is viable if we MAKE it viable, important if we make it IMPORTANT. not if we dismiss it.
JS: What exactly do you like about the work you create and/or do?
RK: I love finding choices that are not obvious ones. I look for the writer’s sense of irony. I love finding a song that will express my character. I love meeting new people all the time and sharing intimate stories with them, on and off the stage. In theatre we hug each other a lot. We are like a family in many ways. We are dysfunctional at times. Sometimes we are passionate about the wrong things. But there is always love to be had. We are playing with emotion. It is real. It is delicate. I remember being told by Paddy Crean – ‘Hold the handle of a sword as if it is a bird. You don’t want it to escape but you want it to still have its freedom.” That’s like theatre emotion too.
JS: In your creative life thus far, what have been the most helpful comments you have heard about your work?
RK: When people tell me, “I didn’t recognize you in that role”, or when they say, “I didn’t know you did that kind of theatre.” I am always excited that they have seen a different aspect of who I am. I try not to let praise inflate my ego. When you believe the praise, you have to believe the criticism too.
JS: Finally, what do you yourself find to be the most intriguing and/or surprising things about you?
RK: I am not ashamed to say I am a really good cook and I am a good listener (which has helped me immensely in my work and life). I am certain my fascination with Quantum Physics has wrought an incredible amount of infrastructure to my sub-conscious Dreamwold. Some might call it madness and it may very well be, but I know what it is like to breathe underwater with the whales; to fly like a bird in the sky and to navigate my latitude and longitude by picking out constellations reflected on the surface of a still lake in southern Spain. It’s the artist’s life for me.