Creative connections

OLGA LIVSHIN

Michelle Baynton is not the only one in her family to choose performance as a career. “My mom, Jill Newman, is a musician,” she said. “She sings and plays guitar. I grew into performing naturally.”

Baynton chose to be more expansive in her repertoire, however. “I don’t want to limit myself to one genre,” she told the Independent. “I want to do everything, to be open to different things. I’m studying opera at UBC. I can play several instruments – flute, piano and some percussion. I sing and act. I love Shakespeare … and would love to play everything he has written. I’m passionate about classical music and opera, like Puccini, but my quirky, experimental side enjoys musical theatre and comedy. I also love writing. I have an unfinished novel, and I write music and lyrics for my own songs – in that, I take after my mom.”

Currently, the young actor/musician is in the musical A ... My Name is Alice, which is playing at Studio 1398 on Granville Island until Aug. 25. “It’s a musical revue,” Baynton explained. “It was written in the ’80s as a feminist show, so it’s a bit dated, but we’re re-approaching it. It’s interesting to see how it’s still relevant, even though we don’t have to be so radical now.”

The show consists of a series of vignettes, where each of the five participating women singers plays several different roles. “We have songs and monologues, recite poetry and dance,” Baynton related. “It’s about every aspect of a woman. We are all women, all ‘Alices,’ but different types. I play a reporter, a poetess and an average woman.”

Baynton’s credo of open boundaries adapts marvelously to this show. Every Alice she plays reverberates with different aspects of femininity, demanding a wide range of artistic and musical skills. And she gets the chance to play a man, as well. “In some of my Alice characters, I need to bare my soul, to be myself,” she said. “In others, I need to transform into someone else. One of my roles is a guy, a sleazy kind of fellow. It’s not who I am. To play this role, I watched lots of people; how they move, sit, walk. It’s all in the body language. He is an unpleasant man but, to be convincing, you try not to judge your character, try to understand him. And I wear a baggy shirt to look sort of like a man.” She laughs as she points to her feminine physique.

“The biggest mistake an actor could make is to say ‘no’ to anything. At first, I didn’t see myself as a man, but I said ‘yes’ anyway. The director cast me in that role – there must be a reason, so I tried to find the way.”

Whether in a musical or dramatic production, Baynton said she always strives to reach a moment of truth. “The best moment in any actor’s life is when you really connect with your role. Then, the audience disappears, and you’re some place else, in your character’s world. It’s a hard moment to get and it doesn’t happen often, maybe once or twice, when everything clicks in place, becomes new again. It’s the moment of self-achievement, not playing to the audience reaction, but it’s also the moment when the audience is transported too. People feel it.”

Like many other creative people in the province, Baynton said recent funding cuts to the arts have affected her and the roles that are available. “Finding work in Vancouver is the hardest challenge,” she said. “There is so much talent here, and some of it goes to waste. Many move to Toronto or the U.S. There are more shows there, more auditions, but the competition is fiercer, too. To succeed, you have to be driven, push yourself hard and go to a lot of auditions. And you need luck, being in the right place at the right time, knowing the right people.”

Baynton considers herself lucky to have work most of the time. “There’re gaps, of course, a month or two, but I almost always find shows to be in,” she said. “Not all of them are paid jobs, but they give experience. And I have a full-time job too. I have a great job – customer service for a sports accessories company … I also do lots of writing and editing for the marketing department. It allows me to indulge my passion for writing. And my boss is great, very flexible and understanding, so I can go to auditions and rehearsals when I have to.”

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected][email protected].

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