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| David Ball, centre, as Ren McCormack, the dude who gets townspeople to kick off their Sunday shoes in Footloose. |
When 21-year-old actor David Ball signed a contract to play the lead role of
Ren McCormack in the theatre's first summer production Footloose, he was
reminded that Rainbow Stage vet Jeremy Kushnier actually originated the role of
Ren when it debuted on Broadway in 1998.
"They said, 'You better not screw this up. Jeremy Kushnier is from
Winnipeg and you're doing it in Winnipeg. You better do it justice.'
"They were kidding," Ball laughs. "But not really."
So... no pressure.
Actually, as this season of Canada's longest running outdoor theatre opens
on Monday, one might assume the theatre is feeling a bit of stress that
transcends mere opening-night jitters.
Footloose, the story of a young man who challenges a clergyman's no-dancing
edict in a small town, is the first Rainbow production following the death of
longtime general manager Ken Peter in December 2011. Peter not only had a hand
in choosing the plays Rainbow would mount, he had become one of the pillars of
the organization since he took over the job as its top administrator in 1998.
Peter was the man who announced that longtime Rainbow mainstay Carson
Nattrass would be making his directing debut on Footloose. Peter was on
Nattrass's mind when he was writing his director's notes for the program.
"Footloose's dual protagonists, Ren and Rev. Shaw, have both lost
somebody in their life," Nattrass says. "And soon after I got this
job, we lost Ken.
"I look at this play and see we have a choice to either go forward
alone dealing with loss, or to reach out to your community to move forward as a
team," Nattrass says.
Nattrass and company chose the latter.
"We have swooped in and been moving forward at a rapid and very
positive pace," Nattrass says. "The fact things are going so well
here isn't any disrespect to Ken. In fact, it's because of how much everyone
loved him that it's really going so well here."
Nattrass's extensive onstage Rainbow credits include Hairspray, Good News
and Miss Saigon. He was an assistant director on Grease. He says he has
directed before, either solo or with his partner, actress Sharon Bajer, but
never a production of this magnitude.
Apparently, it is a role for which he has been preparing in a surreptitious
fashion for years.
"Sharon said to me yesterday, when she's in a play, she just does her
job as an actor. The difference between her and I is when I'm in a play as an
actor, I'm also obsessed with the director and what the director is doing, and
the choices he's making."
When it came time to cast that all-important role of Ren, Nattrass
ultimately chose the 21-year-old Ball on the strength of an audition tape he
sent from Toronto's Sheridan College, where he was completing a three-year
theatre program.
"He's unbelievable," Nattrass says. "I contacted our agency
and asked for a Ren, a triple-threat singer-dancer-actor, and I got a lot of
guys who were all in their 30s."
Nattrass ended up casting both Ball as Ren and Julia McLellan in the role of
Ariel Shaw from tapes recorded the same night at Sheridan College.
"I videotaped her dance audition and she videotaped mine for me,"
says Ball.
The two friends likewise shared outdoor theatre experience working on the
stage of Canada's Wonderland outside Toronto.
"We say that we are 'Wonderland Warriors,'" Ball says. "We
survived summers at an outdoor theatre before, so we knew we'd be able to do it
here."
And in fact, the experience of working under Rainbow's geodesic dome in
Kildonan Park has been exhilarating, he says.
"It rained Wednesday while we were working onstage, and hearing the
rain and seeing the lighting through the dome, it's the coolest thing," he
says.
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 16, 2012 G3
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