Chapter One - The Letter

Chapter One




The Letter

It was early 1980. I was 29 years old, was very happily married and had two great kids. My working career was allowing me to make a reasonable living but was a mind numbingly dull factory job. To find some creative balance, I joined a theatre group in Toronto called The New English Stage Company and although the characters involved were mostly likeable, our Artistic Director, Shirley, was, like all actors, a little bit strange. Hold on, make that a lot strange. I certainly include myself in that category. Most of us have this need to be liked. But it is never quite enough. If we make it to like, we want to be loved and achieving that we want to be adored, then and perhaps finally idolized. To make matters worse, many of us are insecure, jealous, petty, and venal.
These qualities in an Artistic Director are bound to assure that all egos in the company are constantly fluctuating between Ying and Yang. People who are normally very likeable and well within the bounds of normal occasionally become psychotic and frequently did so. It was an occasionally toxic environment.
After two years of playing many parts from plays by Shakespeare to Woody Allen, we had just finished a grueling one month tour of Toronto’s church auditoriums concluding with a one week booking at the Central Library Theatre. The play was the stuffy and creaking, The Fourposter by Jan DeHartog, from 1951. It was a two person play where I did not act and was absolutely miscast as the actual Stage Manager. Anyone who knows me can testify that although I have no problem being a manager, in this case it involved the building of sets. That was bound to be a problem because I have no talent for building anything and I struggled with organization and the volunteer help, many of them victims, as I was, of the aforementioned, Madame Shirley.
The schedule meant that for two months I was unable to spend any time with my family and I had had enough of it. I came home one night and told Linda that I would never ever work as a volunteer for a theatre group again. “Unless someone is willing to pay me”, I kvetched, “I will never act again”. I certainly was never going to allow myself to be manipulated into a role that was so totally unsuitable to my abilities. I meant what I said and I left the company for good.

A couple of months passed and I happened upon an article in The Toronto Sun that talked about the fledgling film industry in Toronto and about an entrepreneur, Peter Lavender, who had been supplying extras to film productions. This was long before they were calling Toronto ‘Hollywood North’.

My subsequent letter to Peter went something like this:

“Dear Sir: I read the article about you in the Sun. I studied Theatre Arts at Humber College, have been working as an amateur actor and director and have played everything from a nerd in Play It Again Sam, to Othello, Shylock and several other Shakespearean characters and even played a gay upper class English homosexual.
I have no interest in working as an amateur actor ever again. If you have any paying jobs for an actor, (I gave my vital statistics), who will always give a great performance, give me a call. Yours truly, Joe.”
I included a 5 x 7 snapshot from one of my recent performances and mailed it off.
It was a total long shot and as I reflected on the sheer arrogance of my letter, I thought I would never hear anything.


To my utter shock, a few weeks later, Peter Lavender called one Sunday night.
“Is this Joe?” Peter asked.
“Yes. Who is this?” I answered.
He told me and then asked. “Are you able to be on the set at 6:30 tomorrow morning? “
It was Sunday about 10PM and I was getting ready for bed and planning to be at my factory job the next morning. This was one of those ‘do or die’ situations and I quickly knew I had to say ‘yes’.
“Be in Georgetown at such and such an address (it was a church on the main street) at 6:30 AM sharp and be prepared to be on the set for two or three days. You don’t need to bring any wardrobe as you will be fitted for your costume.” Peter instructed.
And that was the beginning. Just like that and almost overnight I went from frustrated amateur to fulfilling what had been a lifelong dream. I was going to be a professional actor.
I did not sleep a wink that night and next morning, I phoned into work, told them my allergies were really bothering me and I could not be in. I set out on the start of a fantastic journey.