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May 31, 2013
Theatrical second act
Teacher David Secunda is now an actor.
OLGA LIVSHIN
David Secunda has always lived adventurously: in art and in life. His most recent adventure started a couple years back. After more than two decades teaching English and theatre at a Coquitlam high school, he retired and became an actor. In the last two years, he has amassed a dozen credits to his name. His latest engagement is with the United Players, in their new show, We Are Three Sisters, by Blake Morrison.
Secunda’s adventurous spirit has influenced his choices since his youth. A native of Florida, he received his bachelor in sociology from the University of Florida in 1970, and then escaped the Vietnam War draft by immigrating to Canada, which he did alone.
His second adventure started the very next year, while he was working as a research assistant at Ottawa’s Carleton University. Attracted by the social experiment of kibbutzim, he decided to try it firsthand. He told the Independent about his memorable yearlong trip to Israel.
“There was an Israeli girl on the plane next to me. She was very nice. When we landed in Israel, she asked me if I could help her with her luggage. Of course, I agreed. I only had one backpack. I put a couple of her big boxes on my cart and headed to the customs. They didn’t even look at me, just waved me through. They stopped her though, and there was lots of shouting, but I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t speak much Hebrew then. Later, I found out she was smuggling sewing machines into Israel. She paid for the machines in her boxes, but not for those in mine. I was so young and naïve back then.”
He spent his first night in Israel in the girl’s village and, the next day, headed to the kibbutz. “The Jewish Agency in Montreal told me that everything would be arranged and the kibbutz people would be waiting for me, but when I arrived, they just gaped. They didn’t know who I was. You know how it is in Israel, they took me in anyway.” He spent his first months attending ulpan and working as a shepherd – possibly the country’s first shepherd with a bachelor of sociology.
A year later, when he returned to Canada, the staid life of a research assistant had lost its lustre. He wanted to explore new directions. He craved excitement, he said, and a more creative life.
“I started making fibre sculptures and giant masks from knotted ropes, did some shows,” he recalled. His fascination with masks had its roots in his first fields of study – sociology and anthropology. “Many aboriginal cultures have masks: in Australia, in Africa, among Native Americans. Masks symbolize the spirit unified with the living, not separate, dual entities, like in Western culture…. Masks also epitomize the unknowable forces,” he explained.
During one of his exhibitions, he hit on the idea of performing with his masks, which were quite large. That first attempt at the end of the 1970s was a success. From it stemmed over a decade of Secunda’s experimental work with them. “At first, I called my mask theatre Umago, but later changed the name to Theatre of Giants.”
He filled many roles in his unusual theatre: designing and creating the masks, performing with them, directing and writing the shows. For years, he toured with Theatre of Giants, both in Canada and internationally, representing a unique aspect of Canadian culture. His theatre group performed at Expo ’86 in Vancouver.
That was his first time in Vancouver. He fell in love with the city and decided to move here permanently with his family, but he needed another job. “I couldn’t work with masks forever,” he said. “The shows were very athletic, acrobatic, and I wasn’t getting any younger.”
Fortunately, he liked teaching. His penchant for education manifested while he still performed; he often combined his performances at schools with numerous arts and theatre workshops. By the end of the 1980s, he discovered his new challenge in full-time teaching.
“I was a teacher for 23 years. I always enjoyed putting on students’ plays, but I didn’t act myself. I thought it would be interesting to act,” he explained of his latest career switch to thespian. “Now, I frequently meet my former students in the shows I audition for and play in. In We Are Three Sisters, I’m working alongside one of my former students, Victoria Lyons. All the actors in this play are so strong; I’ve got to step up my skills, to be as good as they are. It is very rewarding.”
For his role in the show, Secunda did a lot of research. “The show is about the Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Anne and Emily. They were writers, women ahead of their era. Their lives and novels demonstrated how far women could go in those times. At first, the sisters were reluctant to publish their novels under their own names. Female writers were not considered the thing. They kept their books secret and published as men, brothers Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell.”
Secunda said that Morrison, the playwright, used Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters as a template for his play. “British writer Elizabeth Gaskell, a friend of Charlotte Brontë, published Charlotte’s posthumous biography,” he explained. “Chekhov definitely read Gaskell’s book. It’s possible that he wrote his Three Sisters as a Russian parallel to it, and now, Morrison wrote his play based on Chekhov’s drama.”
The thematic resonance between Morrison’s play and Chekhov’s masterpiece is, therefore, not accidental. The leitmotif in both plays – sisters longing for social and personal change – implies a deeper connection, almost a full circle. In this light, the new United Players’ production seems an echo across centuries, and Secunda can’t wait to present his part in it to the public.
We Are Three Sisters runs June 7-30 at the Jericho Arts Centre. For more information and tickets, visit unitedplayers.com.
Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
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