I’m sitting in the Charlottetown Mall. The food court here is huge, but abandoned, except for about a half-dozen of us who are in here on a summer’s afternoon. The mall is near my old high school; we’d walk over here when we were flush, which wasn’t often.
When I went to Charlottetown Rural, the school was a red brick box. Years ago they decided to spruce it up with a Cubist-Jetsons addition that’s supposed to represent the ocean or somesuch.
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My travel to Canada went fairly smoothly. I’d forgotten to arrange vegetarian meals, but the stewardess on this Continental flight fell over herself to find me alternatives, bringing three salads and double the number of other items in the in-flight food playset, like buns and apple crumble. Then for the snack, she brought me another salad, more buns and crumble, and a plate full of fruit and so many wedges of cheese I felt I had Secretariat‘s heart beating in my chest. It was as if the woman was afraid of me being in any way unhappy. I can only imagine the Air Canada response to this situation: “Oh well, f*** you.”
I had to stop over in Newark, New Jersey — the first time I’d been on American soil since the whole paranoia state came into being. I wasn’t sure which passport to bring: if I had both on me, they might think I was pulling a Jason Bourne and send me off to some oubliette clink in Cuba. So I just brought my UK passport; my home address is in the UK, so I figured that was safest.
On the contrary: the Homeland Security official in the States said that as a Canadian I could travel hassle-free through the States (this is not what I’d heard nor experienced — I remember my bus stopping at a border station in the middle of pig farms on the border, where my buddy Cosgrove and I were turned back by a nasty guard who couldn’t imagine we might not want to stay in the US). Similarly, the Canadian immigration officer said that a Canadian passport would have meant he couldn’t prevent me from entering Canada. Sensible point.
My connecting flight arrived in Halifax at midnight, touching down in a fog like seafood chowder. I got a shuttle into town easily enough, and was soon travelling through streets I’d long since forgotten. I was dropped off at my hotel, got a key-card from the front desk, and went upstairs to my room, waking up my friend Kirsten. She’d Googled me a few years ago, and we’ve written back and forth just about every day since. Still, it’s always great to see each other in person, and we stayed up late chatting to each other from bed to bed in the hotel room, making each other laugh.
Kirsten was instrumental in getting together a twentieth anniversary reunion of her graduating year from Dalhousie University’s theatre department. Since the program was so small, the invitation was extended to anyone who’d been through the program around that time.
I travel back to the Maritimes each summer to see my folks, so I figured, yeah, what the hell, why not go? But to be honest, I really had nothing at stake in the event. Dalhousie was far in my past, and I didn’t really keep in touch with anyone, I’m not an actor, and I didn’t feel any particular need to revisit those events.
The next day, we met some of the others from Kis’s class for brunch at a little retro-family restaurant out near my grandparents’ old house. I was floored by how… normal her classmates were. Ann runs a series of jewellery stores, Aetna and Paul, brother and sister, run a theatre company, but were so down-to-earth — absolutely not “theatre people” in the least. Aetna’s husband John, who works on film sets, was there, and patiently put up with us reminiscing about how much the program taught us and shaped our subsequent lives.
Even more shocking was that my old schoolmates looked exactly the same.
After lunch, Kis and I wandered around town, picking up some things for the reunion potluck, then went back to our hotel room for a nap. The Halifax air was muggy (as they say in the Maritimes, “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity”, and it was), so we set our thermostat to “Freezer Section” and had a rest. From our window, we could see the harbour, where ships with masts and taut white sails like laundry slid slowly along between the commercial freighters.
We got ourselves ready and headed in a cab over to the Dalhousie Arts Centre, an angular hunk of crumbling 1960s concrete design.
As we entered the building, I remembered days and days of hiding in its corners and staircases, trying to finish projects and memorise lines,and the unending weekends of long rehearsals.
We walked into the studio space where we had our classes, and I stepped back into a hundred lessons about probing into a playwright’s words, shaping my voice for speaking and singing, and owning my body as we learned ballet, jazz, and intricate stage blocking
Person after person arrived, and in that moment popped back into existence for me: I’d forgotten many of them. Any guilt about that quickly vanished in the light of getting to see them again and recapture what we’d shared. “Oh you! I liked you!”
And everyone looked great. Like, eerily the same. I’m accustomed to being told “You don’t look your age”, but none of us did, as if we were all part of an experiment, and something about it had kept us vital for all these years.
I was really happy to be there, and to reconnect with all the things I’d learned and experienced during those years. We read speeches some of our profs and classmates sent, and naturally made fun of our professors’ crazy, brutal, hammy, intense manner
isms and methods, but there was no rancour there: we were who we were because of them, and wouldn’t trade that experience for anything.
My class’s turnout was fairly pathetic, but that’s consistent with how we were back then: Kirsten’s class were naughty and fun-loving, organising things for themselves, whereas our group’s attitude was more “What do we have to do?” That’s just how it was, nothing there to fix or change, but it felt appropriate that the reunion was centred around that year, because they represented the peak of the department’s spirit while I was there, culminating in the giant production of Romeo & Juliet whose set contained more staircases than an Escher drawing. Three people broke legs, and we all sustained an amount of emotional abuse from the director. The costumes were elaborate fabric pastries that cinched our young bodies up with lattices of laces.
Videotape of our shows ran on a television in the background; from time to time we’d stop and comment. The funny thing about watching a recording of a performance is that you can remember exactly what was going through your head in that moment. I saw myself walk onstage in R&J, wearing the tight turquoise-and-brocade sausage-casing that had been designed for me, as ‘Paris’, with frilly collar, cuffs, and a bleached-blonde do worthy of Ziggy Stardust. I knew the second I saw it that I would have an actor’s nightmare that night about being back there, having to remember the lines, which my present-day brain couldn’t. (Sure enough, I did have that nightmare.)
My best friend from those days walked in and Kirsten pointed him out to me. To be honest, I was indifferent about that, too. I’d been really stuck on him back then; now I didn’t feel anything, and there was a certain freedom in that. He was excited to see me and made an effort to talk to me throughout the evening, which was nice. He suggested breakfast the next morning, and I didn’t have any other plans, so I agreed.
One by one the alumni left, most of them with spouses or children in tow. The event was heartwarming, not naughty or drunken at all, and the way it tied up was consistent with the groundedness of all the people I’d been reacquainted with. Everyone was just living their lives, some of us creating in theatre, some creating in other domains. There was absolutely no competition, no pressure to prove ourselves or justify what we’d accomplished.
Some of us continued on to a bar and stayed until closing, but I was untouched by the weak Canadian p*ss that passes for beer, and the hour seemed tamely early compared to the pub lock-ins I’d experienced of late in Edinburgh. What got me, though, was the jet-lag.
Getting up in the morning was no big deal. I walked across the city, long-forgotten areas illuminating and connecting again in my mind as I went, and I found the swanky new restaurant where my old friend asked me to meet him. His beautiful wife came in with him — she was meeting a friend here, too. I’d spoken to her the night before and got a very nice vibe; this was no trophy, but a lucid and capable person in her own right.
My buddy Beale and I sat down, ordered some coffee, and chatted politely. Then things switched gears as we started sharing our various theories about things. My universe stopped and split open: oh yeah, that’s why I liked this guy! We exchanged the themes we were working on right now — we’ve both always had some idea or another we were experimenting with — and spoke animatedly over pancakes and eggs about the essential nature of everything. Between the previous night’s reintroduction to the training I’d been through that shaped my adult self and a passionate conversation with this old friend who just got how I see the world, I felt like I’d come to Halifax for a reason. I left Edinburgh feeling stuck about some things, and now they seemed small and miles away in the rearview mirror. My pilot light was relit.
Afterward, as we walked across the Halifax Commons in the burning sun, we agreed that we wished we’d recorded the conversation, because it felt like a big one, an important one, and it would be hard to recreate. He’s my access back into it, though, and me his. It was important to go away and have a life without this person, but I really want to keep in touch with him now. I’ve got a number of “best friends”, even though that superlative would seem to exclude such a thing, but each of them brings something different to my life. I need that.
Beale and I went our different ways for a bit, then had lunch in town. He had an audition that afternoon — as did others from the program, whom we bumped into. I liked Beale’s approach to it all: his career belongs to him, not the people he’s auditioning for. I’m not sure what’s made the difference there; perhaps it’s the fact that he puts on his own production in the summer, The Peggy Show. It’s like me having my micropress: I’m going to see if I can get my latest novel published by someone with the means to do more with it than I can, but if no one wants to, fine, I’ll do it myself. Lord, I’m still auditioning! But the advantage in going at it this way is that you get to do your own work for your own reasons. It’s just a matter of finding people whose vision overlaps with yours. I’m reminded of something someone said to Paul (the one who has a theatre company with his sister, Aetna): “Did you start that because you couldn’t get work?” How can manifesting the whole creative endeavour from start to finish be a lesser activity than going out and landing a job?
Kis and I had dinner with some friends that evening, I met with Beale for a drink later, then I went back to the hotel, where Kis and I stayed up late, laughing, even though her flight the next morning was at an ungodly-early time. I felt guilty staying in bed when she left”¦ but not that guilty. I slept through until it was time to meet my parents, who’d driven over to the mainland to visit an old friend themselves before coming to get me. We had breakfast with Beale, over which we concocted a plan to go see his show when they brought me back over to catch my flight. Then we hit the road.
I love my folks, so it was a pleasure to spend the drive with them, catching up and chatting over the headrest at Mom. We stopped for a coffee at Tim Horton’s, so I had to try their famous coffee, since I’ve heard so much about it and have only recently started drinking the stuff myself. My impression: mocha ashtray.
We crossed through Nova Scotia until we reached the Confederation Bridge, which connects Prince Edward Island to the mainland. We drove onto it, and the height and length of the thing made it disappear off in the distance before us, like a bridge to some other world.
So here I am, on the Island. The summers here are a joy, just barely making up for the hell this place is in winter. Tonight we’re off to a lobster dinner in New Glasgow (not very vegetarian, I know; don’t tell the stewardess), and I’ve got a slate of other favourite Island activities I’m looking forward to. To my surprise, I find myself considering the idea of spending more time here.
OK, this is far too long, and if you got all the way down here, I’m amazed. Thank you. I just wanted to get this out of my head and into storage somewhere. And there’s still lots of holiday left.
