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Dec. 20, 2013
Drawn to the theatre
Aberle is part of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya.
OLGA LIVSHIN
Actor Stephen Aberle comes from a family of academics. His parents were both anthropologists, and he was sure he would follow their examples, until he turned 16. Inspired by a friend involved in a theatre program, he went to an audition, and he never looked back.
After graduated from Studio 58 at Langara College, Aberle participated in many facets of the performing arts. He was seen in musicals and dramas, literary readings and choir recitals all over British Columbia and across Canada. He could never stay off the stage for long.
“When my children were young, I took some time off theatre,” he told the Independent. “I was the stay-at-home parent. But, even then, I sang with the Vancouver Opera Chorus.”
Aberle has also frequently performed at schools, both when he was a fledgling actor and now. He enjoys the interactions with his young audience. “I love doing school shows. Children are the hardest audience. They are not polite like regular theatre-goers. If I hear the Velcro on their shoes, it means they are not interested, and I have to make changes fast. But they ask the most interesting questions.”
For him, theatre is a vocation, not a job. “Theatre people are driven,” he said. “An actor faces a number of challenges, one of the most urgent being money, especially now. You have to be compelled to do it. For me, I feel incomplete if I’m not involved with a theatrical project.”
Like many actors, he has a second profession: he writes computer programs. He knows, like everybody else, that high tech is a generally much more lucrative business than acting, but he could never become a full-time programmer. “If I don’t have an acting part for a long time, I get bad tempered,” he said, laughing.
“Smart people often get involved in different aspects of the theatre to stay employed,” he added. “They act and direct and write and dance and do scenery. Each of those activities enriches the others. They allow you to look at your work from different perspectives. The versatility also gives you more chances to get work. My daughter Rachel is also an actress, but she plays cello, too. Because of her cello ability, she’s got parts in at least four productions she mightn’t have gotten if she didn’t play.”
Aberle’s latest theatrical engagement is the role of Telegin in the upcoming Blackbird Theatre production of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. He learned to play guitar specifically for this role.
Actors jump at the chance to join a production of a Chekhov play, and Aberle said he admires the playwright, who is considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. “Chekhov’s stories deal with the fundamentals of what it means to be human,” said Aberle. “He captured the reality and the intimacy of human life. His characters all have multiple layers, different angles. Even smaller characters, like my Telegin, are complex. There are no heroes and no villains in Chekhov’s plays, no black and white. Everyone has good and bad in him; everything – just shades of gray. Every role is a great role.”
In any Chekhov play, he explained, several threads go on simultaneously at any moment. “You feel something huge brewing,” Aberle continued. “Although Chekhov died in 1904, well before the Russian Revolution, you feel that something big is coming to sweep the characters off their feet. This expectation resonates now, with the ecological disasters all around. The dread of anticipation is in his plays.”
Perhaps because of this anticipation, Chekhov, despite his fame as a dramaturge, had been absent from the Canadian theatre landscape for years, until recently. Now, his plays seem to be everywhere across Canada: in Alberta, in Toronto, in Montreal. In Vancouver, in the space of just one year, the public will have seen all four of his great plays. The first production of Three Sisters in decades was offered to Vancouverites in the spring. Uncle Vanya is on at the Cultch Dec. 23-Jan. 18. The Seagull will be staged at the University of British Columbia in January, and a literary reading of The Cherry Orchard is planned for the spring, to round up Chekhov’s local circuit.
“There must be something in the air,” joked the play’s director, John Wright, when asked about the convergence. Wright, who also serves as Blackbird’s artistic director, was ready with a serious answer, as well. “Why Chekhov now? A better question for Blackbird might be ‘Why not before?’ Why would a classical theatre company wait eight years to do a play by Chekhov, whose oeuvre many regard as the pinnacle of modern dramatic art? The answer may be that one should only attempt great work when one is ready. We have wanted to, but only now feel that we have the resources, the experience and the audience support to make a success of it.”
Wright explained the reasons, both personal and practical, behind the selection of this particular Chekhov play: “Uncle Vanya is the Chekhov play with which I feel most simpatico, and it has the smallest cast. Many companies around the globe seem to have made this same choice in recent seasons, and reports suggest significant public interest in the play. For all that we cherish the extraordinary finesse of his other works and yearn to inhabit all of the roles he has created, nothing quite equals the truth of the stumbling heartbreak and comedy that is Uncle Vanya, or matches the profound empathy that audiences can experience.”
In recognition of a subplot in the play concerning Russia’s deforestation and environmental degradation caused by humans, Blackbird will plant a tree through Trees for the Future for every ticket sold.
Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
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